The Shankly and Gdynia Railway

[IanAlan]

I'm glad that you like the old Triang stuff as well, Puddles. Luckily for me, my late father put all my old model railway stuff in his loft and forty plus years later I retrieved it. As promised, here are some newly-taken United Dairies milk tankers photos - dedicated to all Triang fans on MRF.

Milky Way


Milk and Sheep


Milk and More


So Full of Milk, It Almost Moos


My dad bought the model railway stuff second hand in the 1970s, hence the poor condition of some of it. In other words, some were damaged before I ever got my clumsy boyhood hands on them. A case in point is the missing ladders and hatch on one of the UD tankers. I've got a little piece of plastic that I've painted white which I intend to use for the missing hatch.

All of the rolling stock on the Princess Elizabeth train are Triang, with the possible exception of the Shell - Esso petrol tanker, which doesn't have the Triang name on the underside. The two grey top coaches are also Triang. The Princess Elizabeth doesn't get out much these days on account of being a poor runner. I had to give it a few nudges to get it going, poor old thing.

Survivers from the 70s may well remember the TV advert for milk chocolate with the 'So full of milk ...' slogan. I believe it was Galaxy chocolate, but my memory may deceive me. I hope that I'm not infringing copyright.

[Puddles]

All I have left from my triang trains is a black princess minus its tender and part of the cab roof is missing from when it got dropped, it is also a non runner so it does not have a lot going for it apart from the lots of memories it holds of Sunday mornings on the front room carpet with the smell of roast dinner being cooked by mum and dad pretending he was only helping me set up the trains but loving every minute of it when he was at the controls.
This was back in the fifties when Everything was shut on a Sunday and nothing moved it was always a special day of the week for me. Going off on one of my rambles now about useless information but we had our milk delivered every day by UD on a horse drawn milk cart. Where I went to Junior school in north London just over the road there was a UD depot where they kept all the horses and carts. The carts were lined up in a large building to be reloaded with milk bottles and the horses were kept in stables upstairs over the top of them, the horses used to climb a long slow inclined sloping ramp to get them up and down. Passing the depot There was always an aroma of horse dung in the air and around the corner across the road was a big sweet factory with its own mouth watering aroma so if you had your eyes shut you would always no which side of the road you were on.
Thanks for the pictures of the milk trains Ian.

Puddles

[glencairn]

Lovely (and not so lovely) memories flooding back.

U D tankers did not mean much to me, so I never had one on my layout. Our milk came from a small group of dairies in Leeds -- Associated Dairies. They grew to become Asda.

Glencairn

[Bandit Mick]

Thanks for the extra pics Ian. My Triang stock was also second hand.

[cheshire lines]

I also have a couple of the UD milk tankers which were owned by my dad originally. We used to have a Hornby Dublo 3 rail layout when I was younger, but it was all sold when I was in my late teens.

Although dad never had another layout of his own, a neighbour got him involved with a local model railway club and over the next few years he bought a lot of locos and rolling stock which he ran on the club layouts. Sadly, a few years before he passed away, his health deteriorated such that he was unable to continue going to the club nights. At that point he offered all his locos and rolling stock to me. This was the prompt I needed to start building a layout of my own so I could run some of his locos and rolling stock. I sold off some of the larger locos, which wouldn't cope with the curves on my layout, but still have far more locos and coaches etc. than I can fit on at any one time.

Dad lived long enough for me to be able to show him photos of Lostock Junction as a work in progress, with enough track laid for me to run some of his locos and rolling stock.

[IanAlan]

Good evening gentlemen,
it's nice to have inspired such a lot of mostly happy memories, and fascinating to hear some of your 'life stories' or at least vital snippets of them.

I have no association with UD, the company. My nostalgia is for the model wagons themselves. For the record, my mum got her milk delivered by our local co-op, where my uncle Roy worked (actually the husband of my mum's best friend, not a real uncle). He's still going strong in his 90s although the dairy closed donkeys years ago.

My dad died about four years before I got back into model railways, so he never saw its rebirth. But on the topic of giving something back to Dad (completely non-railway), back in 2001 England were playing Germany in a World Cup qualifier, I was staying at my parents' house and I asked him if he was going to watch the match. He said he wasn't going to bother, so I turned it on anyway, and England won 5-1 in Munich. That was my giving something back to my Dad. Memories.

Dusk Falling


The Sun's Rays Low on the Horizon


Trains Passing


I've got some other Triang stuff, so I'll have to do another Triang Day soon. Many thanks for the idea MG and glad you liked them.

And keep those memories coming, gentlemen.

[IanAlan]

Ooops. Sorry Bandit Mick, that should have said 'Thanks BM'.

[IanAlan]

New Wheels










I've replaced the old plastic wheels with new metal ones on six wagons and one coach. Previously, I hardly ever used them, except as static features, because they were such poor rollers, lurching about like drunken sailors.

The regenerated rolling stock are the wagons on the small black and green locomotives in the first photo, and the last coach in the second photo. The latter was given to me by My Friend Stan, who got it from a job lot, and - post lockdown - I think I ought to invest in a pot of maroon paint to cover up the botched repainting done by its previous owner.

The other wagons are from my boyhood and were well overdue a refit. One of the long green military wagons has been sitting in a box in several pieces for the last 50 years waiting for repair. Yesterday, I finally got out my daughter's Mecanno and brought it back to life.

I've got an ancient guard's van to do tomorrow, which will finish up the 30 wheels, making eight items of working rolling stock for £24.50. I'm chuffed.

[glencairn]

It's a great feeling getting a troublesome vehicle running again.

Glencairn

[Puddles]

I purchased nine second hand shell tankers on eBay which are in good condition apart from the problem that most of them wobble when they are running due to bent axles, after reading Glencairn’s last comment it has inspired me to re wheel them and get them running on the layout rather than being parked up unused in the fiddle yard. They were so cheap to buy it was not worth sending them back. Thank you Ian.
Puddles