>Trade in bananas from the West Indies grew very rapidly in the first years of the twentieth century. Imports were started about 1902 by Elders & Fyffe through Bristol and Manchester (Salford) Docks. Within three years, six more boats were in service and three were being built. It was at this point that Elders & Fyffe, who wished to increase the service from Manchester to London, approached the GNR for heated wagons and storage accommodation in the goods yard. They were offered three bays under the new Outwards Shed, in what were formerly the Western Coal Drops.
>The volume shipped via King’s Cross increased from 2,255 tons in 1905 to 7,768 tons in 1907, suggesting that bananas had rapidly become a staple of many Londoners’ diets.
>Milk became an important traffic for the Company in the 1880s. In 1884 King’s Cross dealt with 44,273 churns (a churn held 10 gallons or 46 litres). The Company built special sidings at King’s Cross in 1893 for the milk trade, and by 1910 about 250,000 milk churns were being delivered each year, four or five special milk trains being run every day with many other wagons attached to ordinary trains. The milk platform was formed with a low area so that trucks could be backed directly alongside rail wagons for the transfer of milk churns.
The more I read about the pre-Grouping companies' freight operations, the more I'd love a simulator - or even a Two Point Hospital-a-like - that made use of storage and handling infrastructure like all this.