A PANEL to commemorate the Barry Railway in the centenary year of its closure, and the bicentenary of one of its principal supporters, Archibald Hood, was handed over to the Barry War Museum Heritage Centre at Barry Island Station by the Institution of Civil Engineers in Wales last week.
The extraordinary growth of Barry came about with the construction of the largest integrated railway and dock system of its kind. This was the last such development in south Wales and involved many industrialists and famous names from the world of engineering such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s son, Henry Marc Brunel, working in partnership with a former president of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), Sir John Wolfe Barry.
The Barry Railway had a relatively short but eventful life that ended in 1923, with its absorption into the Great Western Railway (GWR). To commemorate this important phase of Barry’s history, a panel was presented by Peter Burns, the chair of ICE Wales Cymru to the museum (represented by John Buxton, manager of the Barry Tourist Railway and Glenn Booker of the Barry War Museum) in the presence of members of ICE Wales Cymru, the Barry Mayor, Cllr Ian Johnson, the Deputy Mayor of the Vale, Cllr Eliot Penn and invited guests.
Peter Burns said: “Since 2006 ICE Wales Cymru has placed or supported 30 plaques and information panels throughout Wales – marking important historical engineering sites and commemorating famous engineers such as Trevithick, Brunel and Telford. This is all part of a programme to raise the general public’s awareness of our historical engineering heritage and I hope today will go some way in helping to achieve our objective”.
Barry Island Station is one of the last surviving buildings built by the Barry Railway and was the terminus of the Barry Island branch line, which opened in 1896. The opening of the station marked the start of Barry Island becoming a major tourist resort.
John Buxton, himself a Chartered Civil Engineer, added: “On behalf of the Barry Tourist Railway and the Barry War Museum Heritage Centre, of which I am Patron, I would like to thank ICE Wales Cymru for marking this important event in the history of the town. The plaque will remind visitors to our museum that Barry owes its very existence to the vision of the industrialists and the dedication and skills of the engineers who created the railway and the docks”.
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