On the Great Western around 1900, 2 a.m. “milk specials” sprinted churns from Devon to Paddington so Londoners had fresh milk with their morning tea; old hands say guards would poke thermometers into churns at Swindon to catch spoilage en route. Any North American equivalents you’ve come across, or was this mostly a British obsession?
Not just Britain — NYC, DL&W, and the Rutland ran overnight milk trains, with Borden’s glass‑lined tank cars and cans hustled to city creameries before dawn; inspectors did temperature/acidity spot checks at terminals, same idea as those ‘thermometers into churns at Swindon’ at 2 a.m. For a quick primer, this is decent: Milk car - Wikipedia. Anyone know if the New Haven did en‑route checks around Maybrook, or only at the receiving plants?
On the Boston & Maine, I trace the overnight milk by looking for ‘Milk Extra’ in employee timetables — mine shows a WRJ–Boston dash hitting North Station around 3 a.m., same vibe as your 2 a.m. run. One practical step: station pages flag ‘milk platforms,’ which led me to the old platform at Ayer where the siding alignment still makes sense. Small caveat: I’ve seen mentions of inspectors using lactometers as well as thermometers on B&M, so notes may read a bit differently than the GWR practice.