General News

Seasons greetings from Sandstone

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From all of us at Sandstone, may we wish you all an enjoyable Christmas and a prosperous 2024.

Sandstone has some of the best light for photography in South Africa so please enjoy two views of a Sandstone dawn.

Visits to Sandstone in 2024

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We shall not be holding any events at Sandstone during 2024 but we remain open for day visitors and our self-catering accommodation and camp site will be available for all of 2024

The Summer Steam Festival 2023

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Our last event for 2023 is now over and was a resounding success. We know those of our readers who joined us enjoyed themselves and we look forward to seeing you again. Please enjoy a photo maontage of the event from numerous contributors, both visitors and volunteers.

Sandstone wins the SA Venues Guests’ Choice Award 2023 for the Ficksburg Area

SA Venues Award

SA Venues is the premier online accommodation booking service in South Africa. Sandstone Estates has been listed with SA Venues for just over 2 years now.

The Sandstone Summer Steam Festival

Sandstone Summer Steam Festival

As there is no official Cherry Festival in 2023 we have given our November 2023 event a new name-“The Sandstone Summer Steam Festival”. You can see full details in either English or Afrikaans by clicking on the link to the pdf below. We look forward to welcoming you at Sandstone, 17th to 19th November 2023!

Click here to read more

Sandstone’s Horses. A new addition to the landscape!

Sandstone Horses
Here at Sandstone Estates, we have acquired quite a large number of horses as a result of some strange happenings.

An exciting new book on South African Railways by Jean Dulez

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Renowned South African photographer and videographer, Jean Dulez has just published a new book, “Railways of South Africa and Namibia” “Motive Power and Trains”.

Pandora Village on Sandstone Estates

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Pandora Village on Sandstone Estates is the home to many Sandstone employees and their children.

Being far from any municipal activity, rubbish collection is an issue but, thanks to an initiative by Morgan and Toni Barrett of the nearby Boschfontein Farm, each Tuesday the children meet up and pick up all the litter at Pandora Village. This is then sorted into the various recycling categories and taken to the Ficksburg Municipality landfill site / recycling depot. This programme was started on Boschfontein Farm and it has worked well with the children being rewarded for their efforts. Recently they were taken to Tempelhof Guest and Game Farm for an outing. Much fun was had by them all including the pursuit of a young monkey.

South African Tourism film shoot at Sandstone.

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South African Tourism is a Government initiative to promote tourism to South Africa for business or pleasure and is very active in many centres around the world. A number of film productions are done each year to promote South Africa and Sandstone estates was chosen as one of the locations for a current production. Shooting took place  over one day and featured a family ( film extras) on a visit to Sandstone where they experienced a steam train ride, an ox wagon plus a donkey cart ride. All of these are part of the “Sandstone Experience” that visitors to the Estate can enjoy on any visit.

A photo gallery from the FarRail International Tour to Sandstone.

Photographer, Hinrich Brummer, sent us a selection of photographs taken during the recent FarRail Tour to Sandstone in early July. Featured locomotives are NGG13 number 49, NGG16 number 113 and NG15, “Kalahari” number 17.

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