3 minute review of Hornby 6 wheel Milk Tank R6978

Purchased from Trains4U

Reference photos

3MR
Hornby 6 wheel Milk Tank R6978

Having received email notification that these had arrived in the model shop, I nipped down to get a couple before they sell out, because I bet they do!!
And I was right to do so, because the Hattons and Rails are sold out!! (27/07/2020)

I bought 2 from my local model shop in Peterborough, Trains4U for £13.50 each.

This is a new livery on a model that’s been around for some time. Originally produced by LIMA, now with an upgraded chassis that sports fine scale wheels and NEM pockets for the couplings.

On the layout they should try to avoid 1st radius curves as the 6 wheel chassis will tend to derail. (They will go round, but needs to be done slowly and carefully)

The art work is nice and crisp on the body and detail on the chassis is very good.
Making this a fair “representation” of an LMS designed vehicle.

Although apparently “standardised” the milk tank fleet operated by BR was anything but uniform.
Varieties of vehicle are numerous and difficult to document. Some of the same batch were different!!
The only true standard feature being the 6 wheeled under frame with a wheel base of 13 feet.
The 6 wheelers took over from the 4 wheeled variants in the 1930’s.
Unusually the under frames were the property of the the railway and the tank was owned by the milk company.

The corporate era made these vehicles quite bland with a livery consisting of a silver tank and black under frame. In contrast to pre-nationalised times when a wide variety of liveries were sported due to the large number of small companies using the railways.
Unigate introduced this livery promoting their St Ivel brand in the late 60’s and were to be seen in these colours until the mid 1970’s.

Milk traffic was lost to the roads in the early 1980’s.
Briefly returning in the mid 90’s when DRS had a flow from Penrith to ??

In the later years of operation the main traffic flows were from the south west, Cornwall, Devon and South Wales to London.

Another worthy addition to my railway, but something else added to the list of things waiting to go through the weathering process.

[railwayfan]

Hi, I've just purchased one of these tank wagons, it took a good long search as I only found 4 online model shops with stock. A really nice tanker and your review very clearly shows how good this milk tanker is. Cheers, Steve

[petesmith]

Enjoy your 3min reviews lots better than the 20 to 30min or longer ones

[stephenchappell]

I remember Lima brought these out too
back in the early 80's

[gs]

I recall these in late 70s early 80s in siding up to bridge at totnes station. Which I had a camera then !