In the planning stage of building a model of a milk plant we had in the 1930's. In the early photos, there are two very tall steel smoke stacks, and in the 30's they went to three smokestacks. Would it be safe to assume that each smoke stack represented a boiler? This was a pretty good size milk plant, and I can see where there could have been a need for a third boiler during peak operations. There is a bulk water tank on the roof real close to where the smoke stacks are located.
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I would say it was for three boilers as pasteurization needed steam for the process plus other mechanical need for bottling and running steam type equipment.
The tank on the top was probably needed just for water pressure as to fill the boilers a injector or simplex or duplex pumps were used to overcome boiler pressure .
In 1895, commercial pasteurizing machines for milk were introduced in the United States.
Sounds like a nice project, please post some pictures.
Good reading http://milk.procon.org/view.ti...hp?timelineID=000018
1908 and 1939. Same building, just different views and an extensive remodel/enlargement around 1928-ish. I went to the tax office & got copies of the tax cards, which gave the footprint measurement of the buildings, and I can count the glazed tile to get the height.
They did not bottle here- They separated the cream in skimmers, shipped 120 milk cans of cream to Pittsburgh per day and condensed the skim milk into sweetened condensed milk, shipping one glass lined tank car to Pittsburgh per day. A rather large operation for such a rural community.
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