Visions of Barry

Mention the name ‘Barry’ to any railway enthusiast over a certain age and they will instinctively know to what it refers. Barry in South Wales was the location of the famed Woodham Bros scrap yard, a place to which hundreds of redundant steam engines were consigned from British Railways in the 1960s and from which later well over 100 were destined to be saved and now appear returned to operational service on today’s heritage lines. Barry of course was just one scrap yard amongst many around the country.

So far as sheer numbers was concerned it was certainly not the most prolific destination for withdrawn engines and indeed some that arrived here would still end their days reduced to small components ready to be recycled into the washing machines, motor cars, razor blades and tin cans of the next generation. However, what made Barry so remarkable was the way the engines here were not all reduced to scrap as soon as they arrived and instead many survived, albeit slowly discarding various pieces of metal and odd components as the ravages of the sea air and the efforts of souvenir hunters as well as the early preservationists began to take effect. This new book does not pretend to be a full history of the yard or the engines that arrived and subsequently left. Instead it is a poignant reminder of what the location looked like when literally lines of redundant steam engines stretched as far as the eye could see standing buffer to buffer often almost as if in a last embrace.