Barry Island
Barry Island (Welsh: Ynys y Barri) is a district and peninsula forming part of the town of Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales. It is named after the 6th century Saint Baruc.
The peninsula was an island until the 1880s when it was linked to the mainland as the town of Barry expanded. This was partly due to the opening of Barry Dock by the Barry Railway Company. Established by David Davies the docks now link up the gap which used to form Barry Island. On Barry Docks, the original dock offices are now used by the county council. The dock offices themselves are one of just a handful of buildings in the world classed as calendar buildings. The dock offices has four grand fire places and clocks on its roof, to represent the four seasons, 52 rooms for every week of the year and a grand 365 windows. [citation needed]
There is a railway station still to access the island at Barry Docks, there is also a heritage rail station which still homes original refurbished steam passenger trains. The rail is always open to the public and annually holds events involving a large steam engine replica of Thomas the Tank Engine.
Barry Island is now known for its beach and Barry Island Pleasure Park. The island used to house a Butlins Holiday camp, which was used as for filming scenes in the "Shangri-La" holiday camp from the Doctor Who serial Delta and the Bannermen. The camp has since been dismantled due to health and safety problems. The site was redeveloped for housing, but the island was once again used for location shooting in the 2005 series episodes The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances, standing in for a bomb site in 1941 London.
Barry also has its own castle near Romily Park.
The railway station is the home of both the national services of Arriva Trains Wales, as well as the preserved Vale of Glamorgan Railway. In the 1970s and 1980s Barry was home to hundreds of British Rail steam locomotives that were being scrapped. Many were sold to preservation societies, but in the late 1980s most were destroyed.
The island itself has a railway station which serves as one of the termini on the Vale of Glamorgan Line.