Milk Traffic at White River Junction, Vt.

I found an interesting article in a B&M Bulletin (Vol. XXVIII, No. 3) that touches on a B&M milk train consist arriving and departing WRJ in May 1955. Conductor Bobby Howe documented a few of his trips, the milk train was the one that caught my attention. On train no. 351 arriving WRJ from Boston, was engine 4259 a B&M F2A on the head end with 12 milk cars and caboose no. 104297. Three milk cars are for the CV, four to the CPR, three for connections with the St. J&LC via the CPR, one for the Barre & Chelsea and one for another B&M train.

Arriving WRJ
As the train crosses the diamond and stops next to the station and the CV main line. The conductor goes off duty once the bills are delivered at the station. The B&M crew stay at Hotel Coolidge at that time. The power is cut off and taken back to Westboro. A CV switcher is waiting to take off the CV cars which are on the head end and placing them on their milk train which is ready to go with cars up from Springfield, Ma. At the same time a B&M crew is taking off the caboose and placing the B&M cars onto the train which will head north. The CPR cars are in the middle of the train and are placed on the CPR train by the B&M crew. The return train is done the same way and built on the same track the empties arrived on. B&M add the CPR and B&M loads while the CV crew adds their loads to the tail end followed by a caboose. Of interest is three of the empties that arrived that day had been dropped off, loaded and returned to WRJ to connect with the departing milk train.

Train No. 352 uses the same B&M unit 4259 and caboose. It handled 15 loads back to Boston. Marty, thought this might be of interest to you.  Departing WRJ  CV 552 was a load from Richmond, Vt. and GPEX 1069 was loaded in Waterbury, Vt. on the CV...George Dutka