Although the use of steam powered machinery is limited worldwide, there is still a great deal of use of such machinery, either mobile or static, in the Heritage arena.
We have made a significant change to one of our favourite attractions at Sandstone!
Seb's Children's Railway, which was originally named after one of the grandsons of a Sandstone Director, underwent a major change recently and was enclosed in a game camp which
has changed the nature of the line.
German Journalist, Peter Pauls, is no stranger to Sandstone and visited us in 2017 for our Stars of Sandstone event. You may recall he wrote to us about losing his cellphone at our Stars of Sandstone 2017 event which was found and safely returned to him.
The area around Sandstone Estates saw significant activity during the Boer war of 1899 to 1902,the so called second Boer War. Kommando Nek which is on Sandstone’s property was an escape route for a large Boer force while the Ficksburg area saw a lot of action.
Our first event for 2025 will be The Cosmos Easter Festival. Enjoy a train ride behind double headed NGG16 Garratts for the first time since 2019 on our refurbished Vailima section. The 1913 built NG4 tank locomotive will be running an airport shuttle service to Grootdraai from Hoekfontein and Seb’s Railway will be in full operation on the game camp line.
Marc-Henri Andre, from Switzerland, has been a frequent visitor to Sandstone over the years, particularly to our Stars of Sandstone events. As well as being an accomplished photographer, he is also a talented artist and has produced many sketches of Sandstone scenes and our locomotives. He also produced a number of bespoke calendars for us.
Sandstone’s acquisition of the two Royal Train coaches of 1947 came to the attention of one of our readers, Dr Brian Austin, who is a member of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers.
Our 2024 Cherry Steam Festival was an outstanding success with record number of visitors. We carried over 2000 passenger on out two rail systems, our main line with the mighty NGG16 Garratt locomotive and Seb’s Railway with new coaches and three different engines. The fly boys were there together with our military machines , earthmoving equipment, vintage cars, buses and tractors.