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Mendip Rail Ltd is an independent freight operating railway company in Great Britain. It is a joint venture composed of the rail-operation divisions of Aggregate Industries (formerly Foster Yeoman) and Hanson plc (previously ARC).
The company operates aggregate trains from the quarries of the Mendip Hills in South-West England, to London and South-East England. The Foster Yeoman quarries are at Torr Works and Dulcote Quarry, while Hanson has plants at Batts Combe Quarry and Whatley Quarry.
The company operates four Class 59/0 diesel locomotives owned by Aggregate Industries and four Class 59/1 locomotives owned by Hanson. In addition, two SW1001 Switchers are owned and operated at Whatley and Merehead quarries. It owns Merehead Traction Maintenance Depot (Merehead TMD) where the eight locomotives are allocated. They can also be seen at Hither Green TMD or Eastleigh Works where they receive heavy maintenance.
shunter at the Torr Works Quarry]] British Rail shunting and mainline locomotives were used initially, but in 1972 Foster Yeoman bought the first of several Class 08 shunting engines. The company also has a General Motors EMD SW1001 switching locomotive which was purchased in 1980.Searl and Jacob, pages 23-27
As a result of poor reliability of the various locomotives used by British Rail to haul stone trains from the West Country (with availability of the Class 56 locomotives from May 1984 as low as 30%, and only 60% of trains running on time), Foster Yeoman began negotiations with British Rail to improve service. Having already supplied its own wagons (with a reliability level of 96%) Foster Yeoman suggested to British Rail that it could operate its own locomotives, which would be the first privately owned engines to run on British rail tracks. British Rail's problem was the hard tie-in and control of the rail unions, but nevertheless BR accepted the principle.
Foster Yeoman issued a tender document which requested 95% reliability.British Railways Railfreight leaflet Changing Horses, issue number 1, reproduced in Searl and Jacob, page 43 General Motors' bid was ultimately successful, in particular because their proposed design, derived from the EMD SD40-2, was equipped with the well-proven Super Series creep control, which allows superior traction at very low speeds. This, it was found, would enable a single locomotive to haul Foster Yeoman's 4,300 tonne stone trains, whilst two Class 56 or Class 58 engines would be needed to move the same load. This enabled Foster Yeoman to reduce its requirement from the original six locomotives to four.
The contract with General Motors was signed in November 1984 and the new locomotives, built at the GM plant in La Grange, Illinois, were shipped across the Atlantic in January 1986.Searl and Jacob, page 42-51 The JT26CW-SS,General Motors data sheet, reproduced in Searl and Jacob, page 48 newly designated as British Rail Class 59/0, had a cab layout taken from the Class 58, to make driver assimilation easier, and to meet the British loading gauge a considerable amount of redesign work and various compromises were required from the original GM prototype. Once in the United Kingdom, further tests were undertaken before Foster Yeoman's new locomotives entered service in February 1986. They were officially named in a ceremony at Merehead on 28 June 1986.Searl and Jacob, pages 53-37
The Class 59s delivered 99% reliability, leading Foster Yeoman to order a fifth engine in 1988.Searl and Jacob, pages 54 and 58 In their first ten years of operation the five locomotives between them hauled over 50 million tonnes of aggregates away from Merehead.
The four former-Yeoman locomotives still operated by Mendip Rail are:
59003 Yeoman Highlander was exported to Germany in 1997,Searl and Jacob, pages 94 to 98 renumbered as 259 003, and operated by Yeoman/Deutsche Bahn (DB), pulling stone trains. It has since been sold on to Heavy Haul Power International where it is still working on coal trains and pulls the highest train weight of any locomotive presently in Germany. On 19 August 2014, GB Railfreight confirmed it had purchased 59003 and planned to return it to the UK to haul GBRF freight trains by the end of 2014. GBRF News Release 19 August 2014
On 26 May 1991 Kenneth J Painter (59005) (with assistance from Yeoman Endeavour) set the European haulage record, with a stone train weighing 11,982 tonnes and long. However, the so-called 'mega train' experiment was not fully successful, as a coupling in the centre of the train broke.Searl and Jacob, pages 88-93
The four Hanson locomotives operated by Mendip Rail are:
| + Mendip Rail shunting locomotives |
| BR D3002, now preserved on the Plym Valley Railway (2025). 9781912995011, Industrial Railway Society. ISBN 9781912995011 |
| BR D3003, later displayed at Wanstrow but cut up in 1991 |
| BR 08032, now preserved on the Watercress Line |
| BR 08650 |
| BR 08652 |
The eight locomotives display four different liveries:
Mendip Rail's class 59s work services between various destinations which have changed over time according to demand and specific contracts. They have worked regularly over southern railway tracks, for example to the former Foster Yeoman terminals at Eastleigh and Botley, as well as delivering aggregates for construction work on the Thames Barrier, Second Severn Crossing, Channel Tunnel and most recently Heathrow Terminal 5, which required 3 million tonnes of stone.Searl and Jacob, pages 78 to 87
, Mendip Rail hauled about 4.5 million tonnes of stone from Torr Works each year, and about 2.5 million tonnes from Whatley Quarry.
The runaway train consisted of a shunter hauling sixteen loaded stone wagons, weighing a total of 1,700 tonnes. It had been engaged in marshalling yard with another train at the quarry rail siding when the train's main air brake handle suffered a mechanical failure. The crew had attempted to stop the train by applying the shunter's direct air brake, but this was negated by the momentum of the moving wagons. The shunter's Driver's Safety Device (deadman's pedal) was disabled by a feature that let the driver leave his seat to monitor the train's passage as long as the direct air brake was applied. Had that brake been released and the deadman's pedal been functional, the train's main air brakes would have applied automatically and stopped the train. Trap points which might have derailed the train before it joined the branch line had not been reset after the mainline train departed.
While it had been travelling less than at the time of the brake failure, the runaway accelerated down a gradient to a speed of by the time it collided with the mainline locomotive (which was going in the same direction), over down the line. The shunter's crew had abandoned the locomotive before impact and there were no serious injuries as a result.
The shunter, which by the time of impact was already damaged after passing a tunnel too low for it, was derailed, as were the first five stone wagons; four of those completely left the branch line and travelled down a steep embankment. The shunter suffered significant but repairable damage, and there was only minor damage to the mainline locomotive. A section of track was completely destroyed.
The Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB) reviewed the accident and decided that it did not warrant undertaking a full investigation. The RAIB did recommend that an additional "brake of last resort" be fitted to the shunter and to similar industrial locomotives. The RAIB also noted the need to consider the use of self-restoring trap points for the quarry sidings.
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