Marvellous Milking Magic

By Rebecca Carson

Sam Kennedy once told Daddy that if he ever saw a Gascoigne Auto-Wash, he should buy it as he might not ever see one again. A Gascoigne AutoWash is a piece of equipment used to clean the clusters that were used in the days when milking machines had buckets and a vacuum line above the cow stands. It could wash four clusters at a time, but if you only had three you bunged one pipe with red wax. By connecting the clusters to the Auto-Wash, the cleaning water was sucked up into a glass tube. When it was full, the flap at the bottom opened and the water fell down into a big sink, where it was sucked back up through the clusters again. This was better than getting a bucket of water and washing it out by hand, and it meant you could be in the house for your breakfast a lot sooner!

A man showed Dad a glass tube and asked him, “Do you know what this is?” Dad saw the iconic red wax bung and knew what it was, so he bought it. Dad and I polished it up, and found that it was very shiny under the grime and the glass on it is nice and clean.

Dad’s best mate Thomas McNeil is a dairy farmer and in his parlour, he had a tap like one of the ones that you would see in an old byre. Being dad’s best mate, he offered for us to come over and test our Auto-Wash. I bought a galvanised dairy sink for a tenner from Granda’s neighbour. We put the galvanised sink up against the wall in the parlour. Thomas drilled holes into the wall and then screwed the Auto-Wash up. One hose went from the tap to the Auto-Wash; this supplied the vacuum, while the other went from the cluster in the sink to the unit. I pressed the green button that started the cycle, I turned the tap and we quickly realised that something was wrong. It took us a minute, but we soon figured out that the rubber seal was so old (older than Dad!) that the irregularities of the surface were allowing air to get it held the water better, but it wasn’t the job done. When it was time to go home, Dad and I popped down to John Whyte Bearings and got an O- ring that will hopefully solve the problem.

Dad went on to Ebay, and bought a vacuum gauge that measures in inches of mercury (in Hg) We tested the gauge on Thomas’s vacuum and it read 15in which is about right, so there was not much work to do on it, other than polish it.

We have the bucket unit, cluster and a pre-war Manus vacuum pump. All we need now is a vacuum regulator, and a cow. If you know where I can find a vintage regulator

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