Leicester Braunston Gate

[Osbo]

This former railway goods yard was built by the Great Central Railway in 1897. It lay beside the former GCR route through Leicester and between Upperton Road and Western Boulevard. After the final part of the Great Central closed in 1969 a man called Vic Berry set up a scrap business on the site in 1973. He developed the business to include not only scrapping redundant railway wagons, coaches and locomotives but began providing a repair and painting business, including the removal of asbestos from vehicles before returning them for further use. The number of locomotives and coaches began to accumulate as the speed of withdrawls increased. The yard bacame famous for the stacks of stock 3 or 4 vehicles high. All this activity came to an abrupt end when on Sunday 10th March 1991 a serious fire broke out in the yard and burned for several hours sending airborne asbestos particles accross the city. After months of difficulties the company ceased trading in June 1991. The site was re-developed as part of the Leicester City Challenge project in 1996/97 as Bede Island. I took the following pictures there on 6th October 1990.

 

[J_a_t_33]

Trains stacked up like cans of beans, mental!

Love it!

 

[HistoryBuff]

Wow.

 

[FunkyMuffin]

That is crazy!

 

[Ash.saini]

Barry scrapyard brings back memories

 

[Osbo]

Barry scrapyard brings back memories

Yes I first went there in 1968

 

[The Wombat]

I know the area, so very interesting.
thanks for sharing

 

[BikinGlynn]

I would of loved a look round there tbh, did anyone actually get in the locos etc I wonder

 

[Hayman]

Thank you for the photos of all those coaches stacked up to four high, and some in neat rows as if bricks in a wall. The "Western Progress 1835 [the year the Great Western Railway was founded] - 1985 [I'm not sure what that year signified]" coach the most ironic - and saddest - of all.

As for the fire, I wonder how a profit was going to be made from buying, storing and cutting up all those coaches? The locos I can understand, but the labour needed to
separate the valuable metal from the worthless wood, plastic and upholstered seats in those coaches would have been very costly. When, around the 1950s, town councils got rid of their trams, they were deliberately set on fire, so that only the steel, copper and brass remained.

Was the fire a way out for the owners?

 

[Hayman]

Barry scrapyard brings back memories

It is thanks to Bill Woodham concentrating on cutting up the mass of goods wagons he'd bought before turning to the mainly ex-GWR locos at Barry that we have so many of them running on heritage lines today.

 

[Roderick]

Stunning pics, really enjoyed them, I'm really glad you saved so many pictures and shared them.