Barry Tourist Railway

About

The Barry Tourist Railway (formerly the Barry Island Railway) was a railway developed to attract visitors to Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales. It was a key element of the Barry Rail Centre which also includes engineering and training facilities. An unusual aspect of the railway was that, for several hundred yards across the Causeway from Barry to Barry Island, the trackbed ran directly alongside the Network Rail track, which used the original up line, while the Barry Tourist Railway used the down line.

This continued from Barry, crossing the Causeway and the 149-yard (136 m) Barry Island viaduct, after which the two lines diverged into separate platforms at Barry Island. The railway did not consider itself a line but rather a network, as it operated two different routes. This is illustrated in the map below, with Network Rail shown in red, and the tourist railway shown in blue.

In November 2008, the landowner the Vale of Glamorgan Council, undertook a commercial tender exercise, which terminated the lease of previous operator the Vale of Glamorgan Railway in favour of a private operator, Cambrian Transport, under a 20-year-long lease. Operations commenced in December 2009...