Cider Making & Distribution
If you are in the area there is now a Cider Museum in Hereford (The Cider Museum, 21 Ryelands Street, Hereford HR4 0LW, enquiries@cidermuseum.co.uk, Tel: 01432 354207)
Cider is a drink made from apples, Perry is a similar drink but made from pears, as both apples and pears grwo well in the UK we have long had an industry producing these drinks.
Cider was very much a home industry, made by farmers in their kitchens, until the later 19th Century. Someone then decided to set up a factory to produce the stuff on an industrial scale. Perry is basically cider made from pears, always something of a niche product I gather, but a pretty big niche.
The cider companies are also major suppliers of pectin, a white to brown powder which can be extracted from the cell walls of most fruits. Pectin is used in cooking as a jellifying, thickening and stabilizing agent (notably in jams, confectionery articles, baked and dairy products). It has also become important in the cosmetics and pharmaceutics industries.
The apple harvesting 'season' runs from early September until the end of October. Originally supplies of apples were brought in to the works in large hessian sacks by farmers and on cider company lorries. As they were to be crushed it didn't matter if they were bruised, apples for sale via grocers were usually shipped in barrels r light wooden cases until (I believe) after World War Two, when cardboard cartons were introduced, often strapped down onto pallets.
By the 1930s there were dealers setting up to collect the apples and arrange bulk delivery to the factories using tipper lorries. In the 1930s a typical lorry might only carry one and a half tons, so it made sense to run the load from the farm to the railway for shipping to the factory. The railways have been involved with the cider industry from the later 1930s (possibly earlier) up to the 1960s (possibly later), five plank open wagons were used to take loose apples from goods yards in farming areas to the factory. At the works the siding ran on a raised bank beside a low concrete wall, the apples were dumped into this area directly from the side doors of the wagons.
To make cider the apples were placed in thick hessian sacks called 'cheeses' which were then pressed to squeeze out the juice. The juice was placed in large wooden tanks to ferment. The tanks (made of oak and built like barrels from staves and hoops) were very large, typically 10,000 gallons in the early days of the industry, working up to tanks five times that size by the 1930s. The seams were sealed with rushes brought in from East Anglia.
The actual product was a blend of the various batches, consistency was always a problem here as the fruit varied slightly from each farm.
Up to the 1960s the bottles were man-handled into the cleaning machines and from there to the filling machine and the labeler. They were packed into wooden cases for delivery, by the 1950s the standard method of shipping was wooden cases strapped to pallets with wire. Cider was often supplied to pubs in barrels, these seem to have been standard 'hogshead size.
Fig ___ Typical 'hogshead' cask
The cider companies owned fleets of steam and later motor lorries for delivering barrels of their product, by the 1950s they were using road tanker lorries for deliveries to bottling plants, these lorries would trundle the length and breadth of the country (typically at about 35 miles per hour in those days) and by the 1960s they were using big 8 wheeler tanker lorries, all in the company livery.
The barrels and bottled cider were also shipped out by rail, a rather faster option until the later 1960s. One factory had a wooden platform similar in construction to a timber 'halt', with a pitched roof over it but no sides, a model railway 'platform awning' would serve well for this. The barrels and cases were piled onto this for loading into railway wagons or more usually vans. Bogie 'parcels' type vans were used for this traffic in the 1930s but I am not sure if all the stock used was passenger rated.
In the early post-war era BR built a number of demountable tanks for beer and cider traffic, although I have not yet found any references to their actual use for cider. The demountable tanks remained in use through the 1970s but not into the 1980s. Modelling the demountable tanks is discussed in the section 'Kit Bashing - H Various types of BR era demountable tanks and wagons'. The model shown below is liveried for Bass Charringtons beer, the upper sketch shows one of these tanks in later life being used for adhesives.
Fig___ Model of a demountable beer tank
In the Speedlink era a regular traffic would be a couple of sheet-sided or sliding wall vans to carry deliveries of cider, I think they may also have used bogie tankers (they were definitely used for imported wine). Large sliding wall bogie 'ferry vans' were seen on this traffic in the 1980s, although I am not sure if they were carrying cider for export.
Modelling a Cider factory
There are no distictive external structures at a cider factory, up to the 1960s I believe the oak tanks were housed inside the buildings, by the 1980s large steel tanks (resembling oil tanks) had appeared outside some of the larger works. There was generally a large open yard for receiving the apples, and by the 1930s a coveyor elevator was sometimes seen (these were common by the 1970s). During the harvesting period there would be lots of sacks of apples, not generally piled more than two sacks high, and where a rail connection was run there would be the concrete receiving bay mentioned above. The apple sacks can be represented using 'coal sacks', just paint the contents green with dots of red. You would need quite a few of these, ten would be an absolute minimum.
Sack of 'apples'
A resonable starting poiunt would actually be the Pola (or Model Power) 'Pickle Factory', which has open sided roofed areas to either end with large wooden tanks. By adding external walls, leaving large doorways open so the tanks are visible, you have the basis of a reasonable small cider factory. The platform supplied as part of the kit can be used for the loading of railway or road vehicles (inset track is required if road lorries are to access it).
Pola Pickle Factory kit
A single siding with the factory alongside and the walled-off reception area for rail-delivered and lorried-in apples at the far end is all that is required for a pre-1970s layout. I have shown a loop for two reasons, it makes operation easier but also in the 'season' there would be a lot of traffic and this also serves as a storage siding. The suggested track plan would be about two feet (60cm) long (better if slightly more) in British N.
Suggested cider factory layout
Clutter would consist of some 'coal sacks' in the reception area with the 'coal' painted light green with spots of red and perhaps a conveyor elevator parked to the rear of the area. The elevator shown below left would serve for pre-1970s, that on the right for post 1970s layouts.
Elevators for a cider factory
By the 1980s there was oten a large metal shed into which the ferry vans were run, to be loaded using fork lift trucks, also by this time the large steel tanks were appearing outside the works. The length of ferry van means that to run two at a time into the works (only one inside the shed) requires about 28 inches or 70cm.
Suggested Speedlink era cider factory layout
Growing areas and Cider firms
From the 1920s to the 1930s the industry was fairly stable. Bulmers were one of the biggest firms in the trade, supplying the Midlands and Wales. In London the main supplier was Whiteways who also covered the South Coast. Gaymers covered the eastern parts of the country, the north of England and Scotland. In Tipperary was Magners who covered the Irish trade. Showerings were owned by Guinness and Allied Breweries but produced a number of cider based products (notably Babycham). These large firms tended to buy-out their smaller competitors and in the 1960s there were several mergers between the larger firms in the business.
There are too many firms, and too many mergers and take overs, to include all the details here. In general when a firm was taken over the factory was either closed or used only for storage by the new owners. A search in the internet would probably bring up the details on any particular firm you are interested in.
^
Go to top of page