“Barry Scrapyard” has a special kudos among enthusiasts of my generation as it was where 200+ steam locos were stored to be scrapped, yet most beat the cutter’s torch as they were hard to dismember and so left until other work slackened, supplying the heritage railway lines with largely original motive power once renovated. A few diesels also found there way there, but were all sadly cut up including D600 and D601, which I would have loved to see close-up, but merely saw one from the distance in a coach passing through the town to St Athan – it was probably D600 as it was bleached blue in colour. The locomotives rusted in the sea air in the former goods yard in the lee of Barry Island and in time each was adopted by a group of enthusiasts raising funds to cover their scrap value and take them away – painting and protecting them as best they could in the meantime. The yard owner – Dai Woodham – really did a huge favour to our heritage by preserving these engines, and is rightly honoured by us.
As I didn’t visit the site, I’ve only been able to ascertain details from what others have written, so the photographs are uncaptioned. The site formed a crescent from south east to north west, with long tracks amid grass, wild flowers and hawthorn, lined with loco after loco. At the north west end were buildings and oil storage tanks for the shipping in the pool behind: the sidings under the engines once housed thousands of wagons working to and from the coal fields. These pictures are from the same visit by someone in 1967.
This picture of a 3822’s tender nicely displays the continuity of the ‘Great Western Railway’ into ‘British Railways’ – the nationalised “lion and dartboard’ transfer having been applied over the former writing, and weathering has removed the paint that covered that. The beading strip above the text has protected the logos from the fate of the panel above. 6#####999-BRY-TENDR-SCRAP
The Eric Curnow Collection 