The RCTS: then and now
IN THE pages of The Railway Observer, society members reported a significant development for UK traction in February 1986 when, for the first time, American-built locomotives started operating in this country. These were the four Class 59s, built by General Motors-Electro Motive Diesels (GMEMD) in La Grange, Illinois, for Foster Yeoman.
Numbered Nos. 59001-4, these 3000hp machines were immediately put to work on that company’s heavy and intensively-timetabled stone trains from Merehead quarry in Somerset. Before long, with the annual tonnage going by rail exceeding five million, a fifth loco was ordered, and No. 59005 entered service in June 1989. Its sisters carried names prefixed Yeoman, but this one was named Kenneth J Painter after the firm’s rail director.
A fine reputation for reliable performance soon attracted attention, and another company quarrying in the Mendips, ARC, ordered four Class 59s from GM-EMD, which were built after construction had been switched to Canada at London, Ontario. Nos. 59101-4, named after villages near the company’s site at Whatley quarry, entered service in November 1990. The former GWR mainline from the Frome area to Acton Yard was now host to the lion’s share of these companies’ aggregate products, and from 1993 rail operations of the two were combined under the new trading name of Mendip Rail Ltd.
A third batch, the Class 59/2s, also built in Ontario, entered service for National Power (NP) in 1994/95. The six examples were named after vales near power stations around the country, and worked on coal and gypsum trains serving the power stations of West Yorkshire, based at Knottingley. NP sold its fleet to EWS in 1999, after which the engines were quickly modified to bring them in line with the earlier batches and transferred south to work alongside the Mendip Rail machines. EWS, which was later sold to Deutsche Bahn (DB), ran the Mendip Rail trains until 2019, when it lost the contract, then awarded to Freightliner.
Over the years, the Class 59s have carried a variety of names and liveries, with five of the 15 now bearing the names of company executives. The liveries applied at different times would merit an article of their own, but they include those of Foster Yeoman and its successor owner Aggregate Industries, ARC, Mendip Rail, National Power, EWS and DB Schenker, and now Freightliner. The exception was No. 59003 Yeoman Highlander, which worked in Germany from 1997 to 2014, and on repatriation has since 2015 been part of, and carried the livery of, the GB Railfreight fleet. It continues today to operate alongside the other locos.
This innovative fleet has been closely followed in the RO through the years, with special attention to the various destinations the locos have visited from Acton Yard.