As part of their African Collage journey, which is over 3700km by rail, and extends over 12 days winding its way from Pretoria to Cape Town, a group of 48 Rovos Rail guests visited Sandstone last week for a Walking Tour of the Heritage Collection and a steam train ride to Grootdraai. The 1958 built Class NGG16 Garratt locomotive, number 153, hauled the special train which was made up as a mixed train of goods wagons and passenger coaches much to the delight of the guests.

This book can easily be considered the definitive work on the South African railway system (including Namibia) and its sheer size and comprehensive content defy belief at times. At 426 pages, with a comprehensive and extensive selection of colour and black and white pictures, author Jean Dulez has excelled all expectations on such a definitive book. In reality the book is an update of a previous one, “Railways of Southern Africa 150” by the same author published in 2011 for the  150^th anniversary of the railway in South Africa from 1850 to 2010. That book was developed from an original proposed book by the late Dusty Durrant that never came to fruition.

Lawrence Gross, who hails from the USA, is a rail enthusiast who also runs a successful Transport Consultancy service based in Durango, Colorado. Mr Gross visited Sandstone in  July 2023. He recently sent us one of his photographs from Sandstone that he used for his Picture of the Day on his company website (see: https://intermodalindepth.com/pictures-of-the-day/ )

We receive many pictures of Sandstone but we believe that this shot, from Mr Gross, of Sandstone’s NG15 number 17, at dawn, is very special so we are sharing it with you. Our thanks to Lawrence Grossman and enjoy!

Due to the extreme drought conditions being experienced in the eastern Free State of South Africa  and the associated  fire risks with such conditions, plus the fact that we are approaching harvest time much quicker than normal due to this drought, we have had to restrict visitor access to Sandstone and will only be able to host the walking tours of our Heritage collection on Saturdays when special staff will be on standby.

We would request, however, that you book in advance if possible.

We are, however, able to accommodate large groups on any day that they would like to visit.  Such groups would be handled on an ad hoc basis because special arrangements will need to be made to accommodate them and bookings must be made well in advance

For all visits to Sandstone, please contact Mariette Palmer on e mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or on 064 752 3852.

Sandstone is sorry to announce that the Volunteering event planned for Easter 2024 (March 25^th to April 1^st) has been cancelled.

We have decided to postpone this event to later in 2024 or early 2025 . We believe that Easter is not a suitable time to run this programme as it has caused confusion, with many of our supporters, that we are holding a public event, namely the Easter Festival, as we have run in the past. We have announced previously that we will not be holding any public events during 2024 as we need to update a number of our facilities at Sandstone so running the Volunteer event would be inappropriate.

May we thank you in advance for your understanding on this matter.

Inside Africa on CNN International features Sandstone which is not to be missed!We are extremely proud to have been chosen to be part of the programme which highlights the importance of our presence in the tourism industry in South Africa.It will be flighted on DSTV Channel 401 in South Africa and in the rest of the world on the CNN International channel at the following times.

We thought you would enjoy these recent views of Sandstone taken during an evening walk.

After our Easter Steam and Cosmos Festival, in April 2023, a film crew moved in to Sandstone to shoot some sequences for an upcoming “Bollywood” movie. The crew were on site during the Festival and were keen to have some practice and we arranged an impromptu parade of the Sandstone Heritage collection and visiting aircraft for a short sequence including the horses and riders to be used in the film. The video is short but visually exciting.

A short note from some visitors who enjoyed Sandstone, we are so pleased to receive such positive comments and we hope that all our visitors feel the same.

It seems that Santa has come early this year with the news that the R26 road from Bethlehem to Ficksburg is finally being repaired. The work being undertaken is resurfacing and not just filling the holes as in the past. The very bad section between Fouriesburg and Sandstone is being worked on. Our thanks to Ionia Cherry Farm for the initial information.