Темір жолмен сүт тасымалының тарихы

Milk cars are a specialized type of railroad car intended to transport raw milk from collection points near dairy farms to a processing creamery. Some milk cars were intended for loading with multiple cans of milk, while others were designed with a single tank for bulk loading. Milk cars were often equipped with high speed passenger trucks, passenger type buffer plates, and train signal and steam lines seldom found on conventional refrigerator cars.

Milk has long been a staple food of agricultural societies. Fresh milk sours quickly if kept warm. Railways were used as early as 1840 to rapidly transport fresh milk from farms to cities. Early milk transport was in covered, tin plated steel cans containing about Passenger trains typically offered the fastest service, so milk cans might have first been loaded into baggage cars. A farmer would adjust his herd milking schedule to have the milk cans filled shortly before scheduled arrival of the train. When multiple farmers required shipment, a separate car might be carried by the train specifically for milk cans; and that car could be delivered directly to the creamery to minimize time required for intermediate handling of the milk cans with other baggage. Once the handling advantages of a separate car were recognized, milk cars were built with insulation to reduce warming during transit and the milk cans might be packed in ice during warm weather. A few milk cars were built or retrofitted with mechanical refrigeration following World War II.

Large cities in the eastern United States encouraged nearby rural areas to specialize in production of milk, but milk cars were transporting milk up to 300 mile (483 km) by 1900. Railroads connecting these rural areas to cities scheduled daily milk trains (sometimes called milk runs) to pick up loaded milk cars from collection points along their route. These trains sometimes carried a mail car and a passenger car. Milk trains usually arrived at their destination cities in the late evening so the milk could be unloaded and processed for delivery the following morning. A returning train of empty milk cars departed the city in the early morning hours. These were often the last scheduled passenger trains serving those rural areas, and most milk was traveling in highway trucks by 1960. Rail transport of milk peaked in 1931 when the Official Railway Equipment Register listed 2174 railway owned milk cars and 480 cars owned by shippers. Most railway owned milk cars were made of wood; but the Erie Railroad built over two hundred steel cars in the 1930s, and fifty steel cars delivered to B&M in 1958 were the last milk cars built for United States railroads. The last fifteen were numbered 1900 1914, and equipped with gasoline powered mechanical refrigeration to transport bottled milk as a unit train from Bellows Falls, Vermont to First National Stores in Somerville, Massachusetts. B&M cars numbered 1915 1934 were built without mechanical refrigeration and served as insulated boxcars when no longer needed for milk transport. After bottled milk loadings ended in 1964, B&M made the last United States delivery of bulk milk in August 1972 to Boston from Eagle Bridge, New York.