In 1892, Woodham & Sons was founded by Albert Woodham. The business started as a Dock Porterage business, but by the 1930’s the Woodham family had started to trade in scrap metal. In 1957, they started to dismantle railway wagons as the scheme to modernise the railways was rolled out.
Sixteen thousand steam locomotives and six hundred and fifty thousand wagons were to be scrapped. Woodhams began taking these locomotives and wagons as scrap, and they were stored on land where West Pond had once been.
Woodhams had bought two hundred and ninety seven locomotives by August 1968 and Dai Woodham began selling these at scrap value to preservationists. Over two hundred of these steam locomotives were sold in this way.
Harry Potter
Olton Hall was a steam train that was used regularly on G.W.R. mainline routes to London. As diesel and electric became popular, the era of the steam locomotives was over.
Olton Hall was returned to South wales in1959 and withdrawn totally in 1963. It was then bought by the owners of Woodham Scrap Yard ready for breaking.
The locomotive was bought in 1981 by West Coast Railways and restored. When Warner Bros were looking for a steam train to be used as the Hogwarts Express in the movie Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, they chose the restored Olton Hall steam train. The same train was used in all eight of the Harry Potter films.
