Mendip aggregates quarries
Last updated 25 May 2026
Four contiguous Somerset limestone quarries — Whatley (Hanson), Merehead (Aggregate Industries / Foster Yeoman), Tunstead (Tarmac), and Mountsorrel (Lafarge Tarmac / Bardon Aggregates) — bundled here as one supply-chain entity. Carried jointly by Heavy Haul Rail (lead), DB Cargo, and GB Railfreight.
Mendip aggregates quarries website
| Operating company | Hanson Aggregates (Whatley); Aggregate Industries / Foster Yeoman (Merehead); Tarmac (Tunstead); Lafarge Tarmac / Bardon Aggregates (Mountsorrel) |
| Commodity | Limestone aggregates |
| Active since | Whatley 1969; Merehead 1974; Tunstead rail connection established 1930s; Mountsorrel branch operational 1860s |
| Rail connectivity | Frome–Westbury line via Merehead and Whatley branches; Buxton line for Tunstead; Mountsorrel branch off the Midland Main Line |
| TIPLOC footprint |
WHATFHH
(Whatley Quarry — FHH)
WHATGBF
(Whatley Quarry — GBRf)
WHATLYQ
(Whatley Quarry — legacy)
MERHFHH
(Merehead Quarry — FHH)
MERHGB
(Merehead Quarry — GBRf)
MERHDQ
(Merehead Quarry — legacy)
TUNSFHH
(Tunstead Quarry — FHH)
TUNSGBF
(Tunstead Quarry — GBRf)
TUNSFFL
(Tunstead Quarry — Freightliner)
TUNSTDS
(Tunstead Quarry — sidings)
MOUNGBR
(Mountsorrel Quarry — GBRf)
MOUNTSS
(Mountsorrel Quarry — sidings)
MOUNTTC
(Mountsorrel Quarry — terminal)
|
| Carrier mix |
Heavy Haul Rail
(60%)
DB Cargo
(20%)
GB Railfreight
(16%)
Mendip Rail
(1%)
|
| Trailing 12-period A2F | Inaugural data window — per-period reliability figures from P1 2026-27 onwards. |
Latest period summary
Mendip Quarries handled 391 monitored inbound services and 384 monitored outbound services in Period 2 2026-27. Inbound arrivals read 80% within 15 minutes of schedule against a national freight benchmark of 90%; outbound services read 85% within 15 minutes. The +1 percentage-point move on Period 1 2026-27 inbound and the flat outbound sit within plausible sampling variation at these denominators; the ranges around each reading overlap. PRELIMINARY at T+2; FINAL re-publication at T+35 after Network Rail's batch correction.
Reports
Carriers active
Corridors served
Methodology & sources
All figures derive from Network Rail's NROD TRUST feed, processed via the Gauge Intelligence ingest pipeline. Period definitions, A2F (Arrival to Fifteen), the Wilson 90% interval, daily anomaly rules, cross-view reconciliation, and delay attribution are documented at:
Data window — period boundaries and the data-as-of cutoff
League tables — cross-view reconciliation across the four analytical views
Anomaly detection — daily A2F SPC rules
Delay attribution — DAPR cause-code breakdown
Forecasting — prediction intervals and possession-exposure estimates
The Mendip aggregates quarries are the largest single source of UK rail-borne stone — four contiguous Somerset limestone quarries that produce around half of the rail-served aggregates moved in England. Whatley, Merehead, Tunstead, and Mountsorrel are operated by different parent companies but share the captive joint-venture operator Mendip Rail (a Hanson / Aggregate Industries joint venture) alongside Heavy Haul Rail, DB Cargo, and GB Railfreight.
This page treats the four quarries as one supply-chain entity because they form a single operational cluster: their stone flows to the same destination markets (the south-east, London, and Wiltshire interchanges including Westbury) and the rail capacity that serves them is allocated as a single network. Per-quarry sub-totals are reported as TIPLOC-level breakdowns on the per-period reports.
Activity window
Across the 90 days to 25 May 2026 the published archive observed 1,726 inbound and 1,690 outbound journeys across the four quarries combined (queried gauge_intelligence_v2 at 2026-05-25, 90-day window). This is the largest endpoint count of any supply-chain entity in the published archive. Per-period reliability data for this site, once a closed-period window is available, will be published in the next quarterly archive edition. Corrections and additions welcomed via [email protected].
Methodology
Carrier and footprint figures are computed from Network Rail TRUST data, attributed by destination and origin TIPLOC. The four quarries are bundled because their stone moves through a single captive operational network; per-TIPLOC breakdowns appear on the per-period report. See the league-table methodology for the attribution rules, the data-window methodology for the period boundaries, and the supply-chain entity methodology for the entity classification and bundling rules.
Carrier labels reflect the current operating entity, not the current TRUST attribution. Network Rail issued a distinct toc_id for Heavy Haul Rail in late February 2026 following the 29 January 2026 split of the Freightliner Group, but re-coding of in-flight bulk traffic from the historic Freightliner toc_id is still in progress; at this archive’s published data window the majority of bulk haulage on Mendip TIPLOCs continues to flow under the legacy code. The shares above describe the operator that runs each journey, not the TRUST code under which it appears.
Inaugural data window
This register entry covers identity and rail-freight footprint only. Per-period reliability figures — arrival-to-five-minute pass rate, cancellation rate, intraday pattern — publish from the first full closed rail period that completes under the current attribution model. Until that period closes, footprint counts are the only figures on this page.
Partial carrier attribution
Footprint counts on this page reflect the freight operators whose TRUST activations resolve to this site's TIPLOCs. Movements handled outside the named carriers — internal shunts, non-NROD-reporting operators, or flows attributed to network nodes rather than the site itself — are not captured here. Where the rail-served footprint is shared between several occupiers, the named carrier may not be the contracting party.