African rail-tour news
from
Steam in Action
and
Geoff's Trains
05 March 2013

Southern Afican Steam Season on Track to Success 

All tours are now confirmed

Geoff's Trains and their German partners Tanago are delighted to confirm that the entire Southern African Steam Season planned for May 2013 has been confirmed, all of the component tours will run as planned. If you have not yet booked, there is still space and an opportunity to join one of the premier tours of 2013.

Starting in Johannesburg on 03 May, including visits to Sandstone, Natal, Zimbabwe and Botswana before ending again in South Africa on 11 June, this is probably the most comprehensive and exciting narrow gauge tour of the year. The season has been broken down into a number of modules that can be booked separately or combined to suit your interests.

Stars of Sandstone 2013 Steam Heritage Festival -
4th-12th May 2013.

The Sandstone Heritage Trust is pleased to announce its annual Steam and Heritage gathering will take place from 4th-12th May 2013.  We will be celebrating the centenary of the Kerr-Stuart NG4, a well-designed and very iconic tank engine built specifically for the Alfred County Railway and delivered in 1913. Our NG4 will play a prominent role in the activities and celebrations throughout the festival.

For further particulars click here - 482KB PDF (opens in new window)

Due to the developments taking place at Sandstone an application was made to Vodacom to increase our voice and data capabilities on-site. Vodacom responded to the request and have now installed a base station in the centre of our complex. It has the following specifications: Voice and 3G data. 

This will prove great assistance not only to our many visitors from around the world but also to customers and employees of the new Afgri silo development project which is currently under construction.

Every year the Sandstone Heritage Trust has been showcasing its collection of Narrow Gauge locos, steam traction engines, agricultural machinery, and military vehicles to an ever widening international audience. Inevitably however there are many people who never make the long trip all the way to the Eastern Free State in South Africa.

If you are interested in what is happening at the Sandstone Heritage Trust why not purchase one of our DVD’s? We still have some stock of our 2011 and 2012 event DVD’s. These are outstanding internationally recognised productions by Frameline Film & Television. Frameline have been producing DVD’s for Sandstone for over 15-years and their work is highly commendable and very entertaining.

The following package is available:

Buy our 2011 and 2012 DVD set, together with free photo CD for each year, for an all-in price of £15 or R210.

15 OCTOBER 2012

Two buses of excited children arrived at Sandstone on Monday, 15 October 2012 at 09h00.

The Bagnall was waiting at Hoekfontein Station take them on a trip to Grootdraai.   The children had been practicing songs about trains and as they left the station they were singing their songs.

International Conference on Rail Tourism

The World Association of Tourist Trains and Trams is holding a conference in York, UK at the end of September to highlight various issues concerning the sustainability of all areas of railway heritage. These include financial and commercial sustainability, training and regulation as well as technical and environmental challenges.

The organisation was founded in 2010 with the aim of establishing a worldwide grouping to make the case for rail heritage. With decisions on problems such as the environment being increasingly taken internationally it was felt important to be able to present a unified front at this level. The driving force behind the organisation has been Enrique Diaz of the Tren del fin del Mundo in Argentina who is the organisations Vice President. President David Morgan is also Chairman of the UK's Heritage Railway Association.

We have numerous storage lines that are not properly terminated. Here are two examples of stop blocks installed at Sandstone Estates.

If anyone knows where some of these might be if they could provide us with details we will check availability.

Snow fell last week at Sandstone for the first time this year.

Thank you very much to Hendrik Coetzer who took this wonderful photo and sent it in to us.

Our pictures below also tell the story.

If I could give an account of all that I owe to my predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favour; in fact we are all collective beings, do what we may; for how little have we or are we that we may strictly call our own property? We must receive all and learn, both from those who were before us and those who are with us. Even the greatest genius would not go far if he willed to draw everything out of his own internal self.

- Goethe 

After the flooding of the Pandora and Vailima sections of our line a year ago we were left with some difficult choices.  However, due to tremendous support from a certified Rail Safety Regulator contractor, namely Flint Construction from Natal, we were able to combine resources, use mostly our own equipment and personnel, and reconstruct sections of the line to RSR specifications. 

The true test came during Kalahari Sunrise 2012 when the line was used frequently over a 10-day period by all the locomotives in the fleet including the awesome NG15 / 4 x NGG Garratt line-up.