In addition to carrying eager skiers to the slopes of northern New England, trains regularly carried staples such as milk around the region. In this illustrated program, Dave Saums—editor of the Rutland Railroad Historical Society’s Newsliner Quarterly Journal—will explore the movement of milk by railroad, which is how milk was collected from across New England and upstate New York and delivered to the Boston and New York milk markets. These daily trains were critical to providing fresh milk for city children until trucks and the highway system became the preeminent mode of transport in the 1960s.
If you cannot join us in person, the program can be viewed through Zoom, Facebook, and on Exeter TV Channel 6.
Additional information from the presenter:
We do not think today about the wide availability of so many dairy products of every description –and fresh fruits and vegetables and meats and fish, on every day of the year in every large and small town. How did all of this develop? How could such variety be found at very reasonable prices?
A very significant health problem for American cities that is now lost in history was how fresh milk could be made available everywhere –and especially in major metropolitan areas such as New York and Boston. Small cities were just larger versions of small towns: stables behind every house or small building, horses a vital requirement for transportation of all kinds –and a couple of cows on every block and behind every house, for fresh milk. No refrigeration meant fresh milk, cheese, butter, and produce had to be part of everyday life –straight from the cow. Blocks of ice for ice boxes (prior to refrigerators and mechanical store refrigeration) were only the beginnings of improvements, as ice ponds and ice houses were built in many towns and ice harvesting became an important industry in every town.
A peculiar invention in a rural county in upstate New York led to the development of the “milk car” hauled on the local train that also brought daily newspapers, mail, all sorts of packages, and passengers. Transportation of milk by rail in insulated box cars, cooled with large blocks of ice, meant milk, cheese, yogurt, and butter were suddenly available in larger cities, even for families too poor to have a stable and a family cow, or where there simply was no room as apartment buildings grew and grew in height and numbers.
Milk became a major commodity and an important revenue source on many railroads across New England, New York, and for many other parts of North America. Along with milk, movement of fresh produce and fresh fruit quickly followed, with major ice sources, ice harvesting, ice warehousing, and railroad facilities for “icing” milk cars and produce cars. These developments brought important changes to health challenges in cities, as now fresh milk, fruit, and produce was available in volumes and at lower and lower prices, for most or all residents. More developments followed in the twentieth century, with mechanical refrigeration replacing ice for railroad refrigerator cars and milk cars and the invention of the home refrigerator to replace the ice box.
Major dairy products companies that we know well today developed during the development of the milk train and all of the surrounding infrastructure: H.P. Hood, First National Stores (“Finast”), Crowley, Cabot, Fairfield Farms, Whiting, and a number of other New England companies –some of which are still in operation today. The same is true of a number of New York State companies, as well, such as Borden.
This presentation will include maps of milk train routes, photographs of milk cars, refrigerator cars, milk trains, creameries and milk processing plants, ice harvesting and storage, the ice man, the well-known (at one time!) local milk delivery truck, and the handling of the farmers’ traditional forty-quart milk can –as well as modern refrigerator cars –will be described. Government got involved, too, and major governmental agency edicts had a dramatic impact on many farms and small towns across New England and New York as the federal milk markets were changed.
Today, the bulk of all of the railroad business has been taken by trucks, with the local farmer seeing the milk truck appear every morning. Fruits and produce have moved to air and truck delivery, now with vegetables coming from as far away as The Netherlands and Argentina. Fresh milk, vegetables, dairy products, fish, meats, and every other grocery staple are available everywhere and health challenges arising from lack of fresh milk and fruit for young children and most residents are largely past.