Got milk?

Three GWR Siphons, ready to haul churns without churning the contents

Last week, I received an order of early style milk churns in the mail, which enabled me to put the finishing touches on these three 7mm kits for Great Western Railway milk transporters – known on the GWR as Siphons.

These are mixed media (plastic and photo-etch) kits from Slaters Plastikard in the UK and they were a lot of fun to build. Even though they were produced in the 1980s, they have some lovely features that were miles ahead of the rolling stock produced in North America in the same era. As I built these, I was aided in my research by Great Western Railway Siphons by Jack Slinn and Bernard Clarke – a copy of which I found online at a reasonable price.

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I was particularly impressed by this kit’s clever photo-etched suspension system, which links three sub frames via steel piano wires. This allows the outboard axles to rotate while the centre axle slides from side to side, all in unison – presumably to improve tracking through a model railway’s typically too-tight-radius curves.

The system also allows the centre and one end axle to rock independently of each other, to help negotiate undulations in the track.

These models feature an innovative suspension system. The two brass crews are the points around which the outboard axles rotate. The middle axle slides side-to-side and all three are connected by spring steel wire so they maintain proper alignment to the railheads.

These vehicles – part of the GWR’s “brown fleet” of non-passenger carrying coaching stock -were designed to run in passenger trains, at speed. The three-axle arrangement helped them to deliver milk churns to market without turning the contents into butter en route. Meantime, the open sides promoted ventilation to aid in keeping the milk cool.

I look forward to seeing these run in an early morning train behind a high-stepping locomotive.