A Traffic With Pedigree

David Ratcliffe looks at the former Pedigree Petfoods traffic that ran to and from Melton Mowbray.

- David Ratcliffe

IN 1934, Mars Confections acquired Chappel BrothersLtd, a Manchester concern that canned meat offcuts for sale as pet food. In 1951, the operation was moved to Melton Mowbray, and by 1972 the company had changed its name to Pedigree Petfoods. Annual production had increased to around 400,000 tonnes, which included the market-leading brands in both dog (Pedigree) and cat food (Whiskas).

During the 1960s and early 1970s, Pedigree received deliveries of empty canstock and dispatched finished pet foods by rail. This used both standard BR ‘Vanfits’ and various designs of ‘Palvans’, including some of those built originally for Izal and Heinz traffic, but by the early 1980s the only freight traffic being handled at Melton Mowbray on behalf of Pedigree was a weekly delivery of offal.

Much of the offal comprised frozen pig lungs, which would arrive at the small goods yard adjacent to Melton Mowbray station in rafts of up to four ‘Interfrigo’ vans, each van loaded with approximately 800 frozen lungs.

This long standing flow, which originated from Kolding in Denmark, was routed via Bremen, Antwerp and the Zeebrugge-Harwich train ferry. The ‘Interfrigo’ vans were forwarded from Harwich as far as Toton Yard in the consist of the afternoon Parkeston Quay to Warrington Speedlink. Next morning, the vans would be included in the 09.25 trip from Toton, which called at Melton Mowbray to detach the loads and pick up any empty vans on its way to Corby.

In 1985, a reduction in wagonload workings at Toton resulted in the offal traffic being transferred to the evening Parkeston to Bescot Speedlink, which then connected into the next day’s Bescot to Leicester and Melton Mowbray feeder service.

CONTAINER TRAFFIC