ISBN: | 978-5-5086-7911-8 |
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Barry Railway Company was a coal pit owner developed and owned railway company, formed to provide an alternate route for the sea export of coal mined in the South Wales valleys to the existing monopoly of the Taff Vale Railway and Cardiff Docks. Incorporated from 1884 and built from 1885, by 1910 it had overtaken Cardiff as the largest export point of South Wales coal thanks to its greater efficiency. Like much of the South Wales infrastructure, it quickly declined following the 1926 miners strike, and never recovered after World War II, with the docks becoming the home of the most famous site for the scrapping of British Railways steam locomotives in the 1960s onwards. Now a smaller operation than its former rival, what remains of the railway infrastructure has been absorbed into Network Rail, while the docks, now owned by Associated British Ports, are being given a light industrial and residential make-over.