Adrian Barr
Member
Just found an article on this flow - there was a short term contract to move 90,000 tons from Portbury to the aggregates terminal within Acton Yard:
https://www.railfreight.com/railfreight/2021/02/23/gb-railfreight-and-uk-aggregate-industries/
The last couple of runs appear to have been on 13th and 14th September, running as 6B59 from Acton to Portbury and 6A58 return (pics of those 2 workings on flickr if you search for 6B59 and use advanced search to look for a specific date range). The article does leave open the possibility of further trains running at some point.
I think GBRF have quite a big contract with Aggregate Industries to run services which aren't part of the Mendip Rail contract (i.e. trains not originating at Merehead).
There are several hopper sets in use (mostly former coal HYAs reduced in length), with the majority of trains originating from Bardon Hill and Grain.
The regular Bardon Hill workings are to Colnbrook, Angerstein and Tinsley, and the Grain workings are usually to Acton (high volumes, possibly HS2 related), Ferme Park, Brentford and Bow. There have also been some more irregular / occasional services over the past couple of months. I noticed a couple of Grain - Harlow Mill services running, a Grain - Colnbrook, and also a train from Neath Abbey Wharf (also known as Jersey Marine) to Angerstein earlier this month. The loading point at Coton Hill (Shrewsbury) has also been in action, loading a small number of trains for Angerstein, Colnbrook and at least one to Tinsley.
Incidentally I didn't realise that the old Bardon Aggregates Thorney Mill terminal had shut (probably quite a few years ago!) with Bardon Hill services switching to the Colnbrook terminal that also receives trains from Merehead. There's a brief mention in "Freightliner Locomotives" by Dave Smith (a page from the book came up in the google search result when I typed "thorney mill closure"). Thorney Mill is still visible on google maps with the sidings partially lifted / obstructed through the terminal. I suppose this was an inevitable result of Aggregate Industries owning both the Foster Yeoman terminal at Colnbrook and the nearby Bardon Aggregates one at Thorney Mill.
There have also been some surprising stone workings out of Redcar (in addition to the regular bulk ballast trains for Network Rail), with a small number of occasional Redcar - Tinsley workings. I saw one of these leaving Doncaster Down Decoy empty for Redcar, using a set which had come empty from Tinsley off the service from Bardon Hill. At the beginning of September there were five consecutive days of Redcar - Wellingborough services using GBRF box wagons, observed running round at Down Decoy early in the morning.
Apart from the well-established point-to-point flows, there seems to be a fair bit of variation with aggregate workings, with demand dependent on specific projects requiring specific types of stone and so on. Terminals can be very busy for a while and then volumes suddenly drop.
I notice the HS2 flows from Tytherington to Calvert ceased rather abruptly this month, but I think initial deliveries were to build temporary roads for construction vehicles, so they might restart again later for other phases (there were some workings from Tytherington to Appleford and Banbury Road instead).
To be honest it's a bit hard to keep track of what's happening with construction flows, especially with HS2 flows added to the mix (and it's not always obvious which flows are HS2 related). I find it interesting that Acton was receiving aggregate from both Portbury and Grain - presumably arriving by ship in both cases. Maybe extra capacity was required beyond that available at Grain, or the material was coming from different places ???
