The other issue I see is that Daniel appears to be hoping to receive and despatch trains with a minumum of 22 wagons laden at 75t each - both ways. I am guessing the rail freight operators can take a train to a quarry, load it with "clean product", tip at at Ashville, then reload with "non haz" as Daniel calls it, to ship out. Where does the "non haz" go, and how does the train move from the tip back to the quarry ?
The "non haz" (inert waste / spoil) runs to Forders Sidings, near Stewartby station on the Bedford / Bletchley line. I think the old landfill site at Forders was filled in some time ago, but forms a convenient transfer point from rail to road for onward movement to fill in former clay pits at nearby Elstow, about 5 miles away just south of Bedford. FCC have a site there, and Daniel mentioned Elstow as the destination in the Ashville video "How to Load a train with waste" (post #25), which has a brief drone shot at 6:15 matching up with the "Elstow South Quarry" location on Google Maps.
This was posted by DB Cargo to social media a few months back when the first train ran to Forders (which effectively replaced the temporary terminal next to Peterborough TMD that was receiving spoil from London):
This week we ran the first train into FCC Environment's brand new waste transfer facility at Forders Sidings in Stewartby, Bedfordshire.
DB Cargo UK worked closely with FCC Environment to help them develop and secure the necessary permissions for the new facility, which will see us transport around 288,000 tonnes of material to the site each year.
We will be running approximately five trains a week into Stewartby, predominantly from Neasden Sidings in Wembley, as well as handling and loading all the inert waste product into HGV’s for onward journey by road.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/db-c...ste-teamred-activity-7255478024190541824-L37f
DB Cargo's customer for these trains is FCC Environment, who move spoil from London terminals at Neasden, Cricklewood, Bow (plus the Ashville siding at Thorney Mill) to Forders, Tinsley and Burton.
https://www.fccenvironment.co.uk/our-services/waste-processing/soil-management-solutions/
FCC mention Ashville in this Linkedin post:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fcc-...-with-waste-activity-7310953492255236097-lFXQ
The operation at Forders (drone view of the terminal, train pulling forward into the goods loop, loco running round and departure past Stewartby) is shown in the video below. Despite the video title, I'm not sure the waste from Neasden is HS2 waste as such (although some might come from related construction work around London) as HS2 has its own spoil train operation based at Willesden.
HS2 Waste goes here too! | Purple & Co Railway Adventures
The unloading process at Forders is by grab as you would expect, with an LH60 or similar in use seen in this view from a passing train:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnfrombedford/54348966019/ (Photo: John Jackson)
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Once the Ashville waste is unloaded at Forders, the train usually heads for Neasden (via Acton - the hub for the FCC trains) for reloading, and works a Neasden to Forders circuit for most of the week, so the wagons aren't really "spare" to go and be loaded with aggregate.
Quarry operators are fairly picky about the amount and type of "contamination" considered acceptable in the bottom of a wagon. Aggregate wagons are sometimes swept out if required to switch between incompatible products on different flows, but I think a spoil wagon being used for aggregate might need to be properly washed out, for example if it has wet mud all over the bottom. On rare occasions in the past, a spoil wagon has been transferred into an aggregate set without being properly cleaned out, resulting in the customer refusing to load that wagon. Another potential issue is that I don't think the JNA-T wagons used necessarily have the small access doors in the side that would allow easier access for cleaning (apparently some batches were built with it and some without).
Considering the short distance between Thorney Mill and Acton (11 miles), I don't think it offsets enough empty mileage to be worth the hassle of reloading an aggregate set with spoil and then having to clean it out. Any aggregate from the Mendips to Ashville would most likely run to and from London as part of a jumbo, which means running empties as a separate train direct from, say, Forders to Merehead would do little to reduce empty running. Other aggregates to Ashville come from southeast of London (e.g. Grain) meaning empties from Forders would have to pass through London anyway, where sets could be swapped at Acton to avoid the need to clean the wagons. And with trains into Ashville being run for different customers using dedicated wagon fleets on different contracts with different rail hauliers, I can't see how it would work to reload an empty aggregate set with spoil. If the whole operation was being run for Ashville Incorporated with Ashville wagons from an Ashville quarry being reloaded to go to an Ashville spoil tip where Ashville staff clean out the wagons, the idea would make more sense!
