Barry Scrapyard

I first visited Barry Scrapyard in South Wales in 1967 or 1968 with the Warwickshire Railway Society. I can't recall exactly when it was but am pretty sure it was 1967. I continued to visit the location all through my college days and through my early teaching years, making my final visit in 1987. By that time, there was very little left to photograph. Over this period, I took some 250+ transparencies, the vast majority of them on Kodak High Speed Ektachrome. I have uploaded both colour and black & white versions as, I believe, both have their merits and it is quite nice to view them as a slideshow, where the monochrome image follows the colour.

My very early print photographs were taken with a Kodak 'Brownie' 44A which had two settings - one small aperture and one slightly larger in case it was cloudy! In either late 1968 or early 1969 I changed to a Kodak 'Colorsnap' 35A. This had a little more flexibility. Around 1972, whilst at college, I bought a Praktica Super TL which I used to take, by far, the majority of my Barry photographs. It wasn't until the mid-1980s that I acquired a Nikon FE2.

I bitterly regret not accurately recording the dates I took these photographs or, indeed, details of all the locomotives photographed. Being normally very fastidious about that sort of thing, I can only presume that, as the weather was often so awful, heavy rain and paper & pen not being very compatible, I thought it too much hassle at the time. However, a number of the transparencies are still in their original cardboard holder which has the date of processing stamped on them. As I had them processed almost immediately on returning home, these can be accurately dated to within a month. l have now recorded these dates (ie. March / April 1972). By a little detective work I have also managed to approximately date a few other early photographs.

The relatively small number of photographs that I took using print film in the late 1960s and also between 1971-1975 whilst at college, and also a few in 1987 have a 'Z' prefix and are sorted at the end of the set. A few of these black & white images have never been printed, whilst the one colour print film I used has produced better results now from the scans of the negatives, than the original prints of nearly forty years ago.

When complete, this set will number in excess of 600 images including both colour and black & white versions of the transparencies.

If anyone can definitely identify any of the 'untitled' photographs, or, if I have mis-identified any, I would be most grateful for any information.

All photographs copyright:
Stephen A. Williams