The station here was built and opened by the Barry Railway in December 1888 and just east of the station, the Barry Railway Company's main line from Cadoxton South Junction via Wenvoe to Trehafod Junction in the Rhondda Valley ran and was opened in 1889.

The arrival of the Taff Vale Railway's coastal route from Penarth via Lavernock in 1890, the completion of the branch to Barry Island in 1896 and the opening of the Vale of Glamorgan Line two years after that, added even greater volumes of both passengers (mainly day-trippers but often holidaymakers to the resort at Barry Island) and goods passing through - by 1910 the docks had surpassed neighbouring Cardiff's as the busiest in South Wales for coal exports and subsequently became the biggest coal export dock (in terms of volume) in the world by 1913.

The majority of passenger services ran to/from Cardiff (either via the coast and Penarth or directly via Dinas Powys) but the line via the Wenvoe Tunnel was used by trains to and from Porth via Pontypridd Graig from 1896 onwards and the VoG line had a passenger service to/from Bridgend from its opening in 1898 until closure in 1964.

The yard also suffered a similar fate, with the sidings dismantled after the abandonment of the Wenvoe 'main line' in March 1963[2] and the site subsequently redeveloped for housing.

Some freight traffic bound for the remaining rail-connected parts of the docks still passes through (such as containers & scrap steel) along with that heading further west (e.g. automotive parts for the Ford factory at Bridgend and bulk coal bound for Aberthaw Power Station), but many of the flows that once ran to the docks have now ceased (such as the ICI chemical tank trains from Burn Naze and Baglan Bay which ended in the late 1990s).

Train running information is offered via digital CIS displays and timetable poster boards.

[3] By the summer of 2019, Network Rail was installing a new footbridge with accessible lifts to both platforms and this was nearing completion by October 2019.