Woodham Brothers
| Private company | |
| Industry | Scrap metal Commercial Property |
| Founded | 1892 |
| Headquarters | Barry, Wales |
|
Key people
|
Dai Woodham (1919–1994) |
| Website | woodhambrosltd |
Woodham Brothers Ltd is a trading business, based mainly around activities and premises located within Barry Docks, in Barry, South Wales. It is noted globally for its 1960s activity as a scrapyard (hence its colloquial name of Barry Scrapyard), where 297 withdrawn British Railways steam locomotives were sent, from which 213 were rescued for the developing railway preservation movement.
Established in 1892 as Woodham & Sons by Albert Woodham, the company was based at Thomson Street, Barry. The company bought old rope, dunnage wood and scrap metal from the ships, boats and marine businesses which used the newly created Barry Docks, which it then resold or scrapped.
Albert retired in 1947, when his youngest son, Dai, was demobbed from the British Army after World War II. Dai renamed the business Woodham Brothers Ltd in 1953, creating four lines of business under four separate companies, which between them employed 200 people: Woodham Brothers, Woodham Transport, Woodham Marine and Woodham Metals.
As a result of the 1955 Modernisation Plan the decision was made by the British Railways Board in the late 1950s to:
The strategy chosen to replace the steam locomotive fleet initially involved the replacement of steam shunting and branch line locomotives with diesel-electric traction, and the movement of the replaced small steam locomotives to the major railway works for scrapping. In 1958 the British Transport Commission reappraised the speed of the programme, and the decision was taken to accelerate the disposal of the steam fleet. Although the capacity of the locomotive works was considerable, as a result of the 1958 acceleration the amount of storage and technical scrapping capability of the works became stretched. The British Railways Board decided to out-source via tender to selected scrap merchants the work of scrapping the steam locomotives.
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Wikipedia