Jump to content
 

barry shed post steam, diesels and wagon works


18B
 Share

Recommended Posts

Hi,

 

wondered if anyone has any details of Barry and the locos that visited it and whther they used the shed building of it sthat was given over entirely for wagon repairs?

 

regards

Link to post
Share on other sites

Presumably you’re talking diesel days? The first diesel shunter arrived for crew training in 1957 and the first two new English Electric Type 3s (class 37) in 1963, also for crew training. Just a year later, from September 1964, the building closed as a loco depot and was left empty for some years but the yard was still used to stable locos. Eventually one road in the shed was seeing use for stabling with class 08, 14, 37 and 47 common at that time. Wagons were under repair in the main shed from closure. In 1967 MGRs began to Aberthaw and were soon being serviced here with new lifting jacks and the door closing mechanism found at the power stations. At the same time it was repairing banana vans from the Geest traffic with two roads on the north side being allocated to diesel stabling. The rest of the shed was used for wagons, and for a few years, Freightliner flats from Pengam. Diesels by the mid 1970s stabled south of the shed that was then generally full of wagons.

 

Tracks, by the 1980s, were numbered 1 to 5 from the north side. No.1, a stop end, was used for brake repairs, No.2 was for welding, 3 and 4 were for general repair, No.5 was the condemned wagon road. By the end of that decade ten MGR sets were based here. They also worked on cement wagons, VDA vans in Ford traffic and HUO coal hoppers and towards the end of work here the Welsh MDV coal wagon fleet and a lot of Departmental stock.

 

There was an excellent open day here in 1990 and later that decade had the following types allocated for repair: HAAs; HFAs; HCAs; MEAs; the five MAA/MABs and a large number of the HEAs in the national pool. There were also a large fleet of mixed Engineer’s wagons. Two Cardiff Canton allocated class 08s were based here for local work for many years although from 1995 only one class 09 remained.

 

After Privatisation, in a new venture under EWS management, they built six new MEA box opens on withdrawn HEA underframes. However the workload was dropping off with the main work on FPA coal container flats. Several of the new class 66s worked their first trains from Barry at this time. During May 1999 the remaining staff were given notice and the depot closed in August although the local pilot still stabled here for a few months until October.

 

This wasn’t the end though and in 2000/1 EWS used the shed to store locos with a total of nine class 56s and seven class 37s locked inside at various times followed a few years after by two class 57s. Once they all left the shed was taken over by the preservation society before changing hands again several years later and now is often used for servicing charter train stock and storing ex-Freightliner HXA coal hoppers (with around 100 on site) and other stock.

 

A bit long winded but that’s just a summary – it’s had quite a life since the end of steam days!

 

Hywel

  • Agree 1
  • Informative/Useful 4
Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...