Barry

I went there three times, though once might have been enough because the residents weren’t exactly going anywhere in a hurry and were largely unchanged between visits. I suppose it ended up as a sort of pilgrimage, really. As a 60s spotter, there was almost an expectation that you would go to pay your respects to the age of steam in that way.

The first time that I went there, on 31/7/64, I copped a lot of withdrawn engines that I had never seen before, including a number of ex-GWR tanks, many of them having worked out their existence in the valleys of South Wales, far from our normal hunting grounds in north west England. Our return as part of an organised shed bash on 24/6/65 yielded a few more casualties from the Southern Region.

The last of these visits was on the 31/12/67. We left home on the Wirral the day before in Andy’s Hillman Minx, on loan from his parents, and he had driven us down through Central Wales at the time of a major foot and mouth outbreak. Beds of straw soaked in disinfectant had been strewn across the roads to minimise the spread of the disease.

We aimed first for Newport, and in particular Cashmore’s scrap yard, where some ex-SR Bulleids had been acquired. It was dark by the time we made it to our bed and breakfast in Barry. When we drew back the curtains in the morning, we could see the assembled rows of engines immediately below us, lined up on the curved sidings near the old docks.

Breakfast probably never seemed so incidental, before or since. It was near freezing, with a sharp wind blowing in occasional sharp showers. With the sun shining and in clear air, however, I was able to record the scene, though the resulting images of decaying hulks are probably not everyone’s idea of a good steam photo. It appears that I didn’t even bother writing down any numbers this time.

Nevertheless, I’m glad I went, partly so that every now and then I can brandish my credentials as a committed spotter going way back, and partly because, as we all know, a major story unfolded in the years to come, and this accident of history would end up providing sustenance - life blood, no less - to our railway heritage movement well into the future. Life on the private railways today would be a great deal different had it all not happened in the way that it did.