Visions of Barry

Barry in South Wales was the location of the famed Woodham Bros scrap yard, to which hundreds of redundant steam engines were consigned from British Railways. Of these, well over 100 were destined to be saved and many have been returned to service on today's heritage railway lines. Many of the locomotives that arrived here would still end their days. However, what made Barry so remarkable was the engines here were not all reduced to scrap as soon as they arrived and instead many survived. Later, a first generation of preservationists began to rescue locomotives from Barry to lay the foundations of the UK's railway heritage movement. This new book is a poignant reminder of what the Barry location looked like when lines of redundant steam engines stretched as far as the eye could see, standing buffer to buffer. As well as showing the pre-preservation state of some surviving locomotives, it records the final days of other once proud steam engines, made redundant by the march of time.