Sandstone DVD's, book, and videos 

We have a number of titles available to order as follows:

Anyone wishing to place an order in SA please contact Babita Hira on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Alternatively those wishing to place an order in the UK or elsewhere please contact Joanne West on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 

Sandstone DVDs, book and videos.

We have a number of titles available which can be ordered through our SA and UK office.

For all those wishing to place orders in SA contact Babita Hira at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Alternatively for those wishing to place orders through our UK office contact Joanne West at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

On Saturday 14th May 2011, oom Manie Muller returned to the place of his birth, Compagnes Drift, for the first time since he left as an 11-year-old in 1942. 

He describes what he remembers about the Farm and particularly about the Water Mill ......

Click here to view the article. Opens a separate .pdf (130kb)

The Cosmos out flanked us this year but to celebrate its awakening we took Lawley No. 97 out early today (Friday, 13th April 2012) to catch the beauty of the flowers, the landscape, and the locomotive...

The photographs below were taken by an outstanding photographer, Tessa Joughin.  Our thanks go to her for letting us feature these on our web site.

The annual Autumn Steam and Heritage Gala at Sandstone Estates in the Eastern Free State is a moving feast.  The Sandstone ethos is to combine Heritage items in an agreeable setting.  One of the best ways to do this is to use the consists on the Narrow Gauge railway to showcase other Heritage items and categories, i.e. tractors, military, agricultural implements etc.  This year a popular addition is the mixed freight category were two beautifully restored MF 35’s mounted on a flat car ostensibly on their way to a dealer somewhere in the hinterland of South Africa.

There wasn’t enough water to test the grain cleaner last time, after I finished fitting the screens. Although there has been a heat wave here this week, I was pleased that there was enough water on this visit.

I had arranged to meet Peter and Jill Frow, with whom I’ve been in contact since the beginning of the Reichenau Mill restoration. Peter has been intimately involved with that and although their restoration is complete and the Mill is in the hands of a full time operator, he is still involved in its management. This is his sectional drawing of Reichenau Mill.

My first job was to make a temporary hardboard lid for the short chute which feeds the grain cleaner, as last time I tested it, grain was thrown all over the upper floor! A galvanised steel cover is on order.

My friend Johnny Verreynne visited the Mill on Open Days, nearly four years ago, the 21^st January 2007, to be precise. On that occasion he promised some screens from an old threshing machine, which, he said, would be just what we needed to restore the grain cleaner.

The cleaner needed two grades of screen, one which would allow a grain of wheat through but nothing bigger, like husks, sticks and larger stones. Below that it needed a fine screen which no grain would go through, but through which dust would pass. Dust in this case, coming from the field as well as the threshing floor, which was often made of dung.

Homework for this week was lining the intermediate screen with the fibreglass mosquito netting which is slightly finer than the woven aluminium fly / mosquito net I’d used for the third stage.

There was very little water in the dam, but with the last bar removed completely from the weir, there was just enough to mill and demonstrate with. That was fine, because it meant I could concentrate on the sifter, while the mill idled away in the background, needing little supervision; just topping up directly into the hopper. There definitely wasn’t enough water to drive the elevator as well!

The plan is to demonstrate the rotary sifter producing three different grades of flour. It doesn’t matter what the grades are, some very fine flour must come out of the first stage, coarser at the next stage and coarsest out of the third. Should any whole grains still be present, they must come out of the bran chute at the end.

The first stage screen is in good order and in position. However, the second and third frames did not fit. The third had a very fine screen on it, so it must have come from another machine. The middle one had no screen at all, and had never had clips or a screen attached.