RAILWA V TRANSIT OF MILK 



25 



or 3 A.M. It is then distributed by the milk contractors to the 

 wholesale and retail shops in the metropolis, and reaches the 

 customer at the earliest twelve or fourteen hours after milking. 

 A certain amount of milk, of course, that obtained from the nearer 

 home counties, will reach the consumer a little sooner.^ The milk 

 supply of New York is transported by railroad, some of it travelling 

 a distance of 350 miles. It is delivered in the early morning in 

 40-quart cans or in quart jars, and the dealers distribute. They 

 have no control over the bacterial content of the milk as it arrives, 



' From evidence brought before the Committee on Food Preser\'atives (1901), 

 it appears that the average distance from which seven of the great railway com- 

 panies bring the milk supply into London is more than 200 miles. The chief 

 facts may be given in the following form : — 



It appears that the Great Western Railway Company are the largest carriers of 

 milk in the United Kingdom, the quantity conveyed by them during 1899 being 

 23,495,925 gallons in 1,642,380 cans. Ninety-nine per cent, of the milk traffic 

 received in London by this company is from stations within 150 miles, and the 

 average distance is probably about 60 miles. The chief centre is the Wiltshire 

 Dairy District. The London and North-Westem Railway brings large quan- 

 tities of milk from the Midlands and Staffordshire district. Its most distant 

 supply comes from Tarff in Kirkcudbright (359 miles). The Midland Company 

 conveys milk from Glasgow (max. distance). As a rule, most of the milk (80 to 

 90 per cent.) conveyed on the English railways is carried in special milk-trains. 

 Some of it, in small quantities, is conveyed in vans attached to passenger trains, 

 and a small amount by the ordinary' goods trains. No special precautions are 

 taken to keep milk chums or railway trucks carr>'ing chums in the shade in 

 summer time. Special sheds are exceptional. Generally speaking, the heavy milk 

 traffic passes at night time. Cows are milked in the morning or afternoon, and 

 the milk is frequently mixed and carted by the farmer to the nearest station, 

 whence it is worked to London as most convenient to the company. Railway 

 companies do not collect or deliver milk. They transport from platform to 

 platform only. At the London terminus the milk contractor arranges for 

 delivery-. The companies do not insist upon the milk churns being sealed or 

 locked, and there is no difference in the rates according to whether or not the 

 chums are locked or only fastened. 



