Post by Administrator on Nov 27, 2020 20:17:55 GMT
On Thursday 26th November 1903 the Barry Railway Company sent out a press release announcing their intention to run passenger steamers on the Bristol Channel. This was taken up by the Barry Dock News which published a short piece the following day announcing that a new Barry Railway Company Bill had been lodged with Parliament which, if passed, would permit:
“The Company to provide an adequate and convenient passenger boat service for the thousands of holiday-seekers from the Rhondda and neighbouring valleys who make excursions across the Channel during the summer by the establishment of a regular service of boats daily from the pier head landing stage at Barry”
As railway companies go, the Barry Railway Company was on the small side with a network connecting Barry to Cardiff, Bridgend, Pontyprydd and Rhymney. However as a railway company it nonetheless needed a new act of Parliament to start running boats.
At that time the Bristol Channel excursion trade was in the hands of P & A Campbell and they did not welcome competition particularly from a railway company. They remembered how the expansion of the railway network of boat services had driven them out from the Clyde in earlier years and they didn’t want to see a repeat of that on the Bristol Channel by another, as they saw it, fat cat railway with a network of ready made passengers muscling in on their business.
However, in 1904 the Act of Parliament was passed but it did contain restrictions on what could and what could not be done with the primary focus of boat operations having to be trips with railway connections to and from Barry. That precluded the company, in theory anyway, from operating other and perhaps more lucrative services elsewhere.
LINK
“The Company to provide an adequate and convenient passenger boat service for the thousands of holiday-seekers from the Rhondda and neighbouring valleys who make excursions across the Channel during the summer by the establishment of a regular service of boats daily from the pier head landing stage at Barry”
As railway companies go, the Barry Railway Company was on the small side with a network connecting Barry to Cardiff, Bridgend, Pontyprydd and Rhymney. However as a railway company it nonetheless needed a new act of Parliament to start running boats.
At that time the Bristol Channel excursion trade was in the hands of P & A Campbell and they did not welcome competition particularly from a railway company. They remembered how the expansion of the railway network of boat services had driven them out from the Clyde in earlier years and they didn’t want to see a repeat of that on the Bristol Channel by another, as they saw it, fat cat railway with a network of ready made passengers muscling in on their business.
However, in 1904 the Act of Parliament was passed but it did contain restrictions on what could and what could not be done with the primary focus of boat operations having to be trips with railway connections to and from Barry. That precluded the company, in theory anyway, from operating other and perhaps more lucrative services elsewhere.
LINK