A History of the Class 59s, The American Revolution Part 1, The Class 59/0s and 59/1s

The Class 59s were the first privately-owned diesel locomotives to operate regularly on British mainline. The were also the first US-made mainline diesel locomotives to be imported into Britain.

The Foster Yeoman company which operated the Torr Works quarry near Merehead in Somerset used rail to deliver much of the quarries output to a variety of rail served depots in the south east.

From May 1983 British Rail diagrammed Class 56 locomotives to work these trains but Foster Yeoman were less than impressed with the performance and reliability of the class.

The Electro-Motive Division of General Motors had supplied a shunting locomotive to the quarry in 1980 which Foster Yeoman were very impressed by.

As a result they invited EMD to tender for the delivery of six mainline locomotives to use instead of those supplied by British Rail.

Domestic manufacturers Brush Traction and British Rail Engineering Limited were also invited to tender, but could not meet the 95% availability that Foster Yeoman demanded.

EMDs design of locomotive, fitted with ‘Super Series' wheel creep control enabled a single locomotive to operate the heaviest of the Foster Yeoman trains and so removed the need for the double-heading. As a result just four locomotives were ordered in November 1984.

These locomotives became the Class 59s and were numbered 59001 to 59004. The first locomotive arrived at Southampton from the USA on the 21st January 1986.

While the locomotives were owned by Foster Yeoman, the operation of trains on the main line was conducted by British Rail drivers based at Westbury and Old Oak Common. Maintenance was carried out at Foster Yeoman's Merehead depot but performed by British Rail staff from Bristol Bath Road depot.

An increas in business resulted in a fifth locomotive being ordered in 1988 and was numbered 59005.

In 1987 ARC (Amey Roadstone Construction) Southern ordered four locomotives which were numbered as 59101 to 59104. They were constructed in 1990 at EMD's Canadian plant in London, Ontario and the first locomotive of the batch entered service on the 5th November 1990.

To better manage the utilisation of their locomotives and wagons, ARC Southern and Foster Yeoman founded Mendip Rail in October 1993. The locomotives and wagons were still owned by each parent company but the Class 59 maintenance was now concentrated at Merehead, leaving the depot at Whatley to focus on wagons.
In 1998 ARC became Hanson Quarry Products Europe while Foster Yeoman sold its business to Aggregate Industries on 21st June 2006.

Mendip Rail continued to contract the operation of their trains to British Rail until the privatisation of the railways in the late 1990s. The contract was then given to the English, Welsh and Scottish Railway (EWS) freight company. EWS would eventually be purchased by the German train operator Deutsche Bahn and became DB Schenker Rail, later rebranded as DB Cargo UK.

59002 was repainted into a dark green, orange and grey Mendip Rail livery in the early 2000s.

The Mendip Rail contract came up for renewal in 2019 and was awarded to Freightliner UK after a successful bid.

The new contract included the sale to Freightliner of the eight class 59s owned by Hanson and Aggregate Industries.

Freightliner is presently a majority owned subsidiary of the American holding company Genesee & Wyoming. 59102 now carries Freightliner livery with Genesee & Wyoming branding.

In 2007 Heidelberg Materials from Germany purchased the Hanson operation and 59101 has been repainted into a green livery with Heidelberg Materials branding to reflect this new ownership.

On the 29th November 1996 59003 Yeoman Highlander was taken out of Mendip Rail service and was exported to work in Germany after receiving some modifications. It left the UK via the Channel Tunnel on the 1st May 1997.

In 2014 it was sold to GB Railfreight and returned to the UK. It ran its first tests on the main line on 29th May 2015. It has now gone on long term hire to Colas Railfreight.

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