If it had not been for the scrapyard of Woodham Bros at Barry, in South Wales, the railway preservation movement in the British Isles would have been a fraction of the scale that it is today and a number of steam locomotive classes would have been rendered extinct.
The story of Woodham Bros has been become part of railway folklore, the way that some 200 steam locomotives were rescued from scrapping as a result of unforeseen circumstances, the fact that the scrapyard had a virtually endless supply of wagons to scrap at the same time, the willingness of BR to lift the restriction on scrapmen selling on locomotives that had been sold for scrap and the willingness of preservationists to take on increasingly extreme cases of decayed locomotives for restoration – with the vast majority now either restored to an operational condition or approaching restoration.
In certain cases, the availability of a Barry ‘hulk’ has allowed the preservation movement to use the remains as the basis of effectively a ‘new-build’ locomotive of a class that failed to make it through to preservation in the first place. Starting with ‘4F’ 0-6-0 No 43924, now based on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, in 1968 some 213 steam locomotives were rescued before the site finally closed.
This book outlines the history of Barry scrapyard at the docks with a detailed decade-by decade record of what happened to the locomotives bought by Woodhams for scrapping in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, with photographs of the locomotives at the yard. The locomotives purchased from the yard for restoration are detailed in separate chapters on each of the ‘Big Four’ railway companies and BR-built locomotives, with a photograph of each restored locomotive and captions outlining the career of the locomotive since restoration.
