Woodham Brothers Ltd

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 It is noted globally for its 1960s activity as a scrapyard, where nearly 300 withdrawn British Railways steam locomotives were sent there, and ultimately 213 were rescued for the developing railway preservation movement.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,[1] which it then resold or scrapped.

Albert retired in 1947, when his youngest son David Lloyd Woodham ("Dai") returned from duty in World War II with the artillery regiment in Italy. 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

By the mid-1950s, Woodham Brothers was trading mainly as a scrap metal merchants, producing high quality scrap metal for the newly nationalised steel industry. Dai Woodham as a result of the British Rail decision negotiated a contract in 1957 to scrap metal mainly from the Western Region, covering like other scrap merchants the easily handled railway line and rolling stock, the more complex steam locomotives were to be handled solely by the railway works.


As none of the many South Wales based scrap merchants knew how long the work from scrapping the short wheel base coal wagons from the former South Wales coalfield, they all choose to scrap these first.

Each lot of metal was bought at an auction as a piece of rolling stock or infrastructure, with each lot having a priority for scrapping as detailed by British Railways. Woodham's premises which were based at Barry Docks, agreed an extended lease with the British Transport Docks Board, over the former marshalling yards of the almost redundant Barry Docks, close to what were the locomotives works of the former Barry Railway Company close to Barry Island.


This allowed them to store large quantities of rolling stock that they had bought from British Railways, before they were scrapped