We'll take the car...

An interesting article appeared in the recent edition of Narrow Gauge World on our BSA Rail Car.

Click here to view the article - 3.3MB PDF (opens in a new window)

Peter Randall, one of our visiting locomotive drivers at our Steaming Week in April, has written an interesting article in the widely respected Snowdon Ranger magazine.

Click here to view the article - 2.2MB PDF (opens in new window)

The only change is that having received NGG11, No. 52, at our Bloemfontein Works at short notice we have prioritised that at the expense of NG15, No. 136.

Sandstone coverage in Sentinel Transport News

Sandstone's Sentinel is well known as being the only running S4 in South Africa as far as we know. We do receive excellent coverage from overseas.

The September edition of Sentinel Transport News featured our S4 on the back cover.

Steam Railway Magazine article on Chamdor

The prestigious British magazine, Steam Railway, covered the recent destruction of rare locomotives at SANRASM's Chamdor site in their recent edition.

Our thanks go to Oom Bernard Dodd for providing us with a scan of this article.

Click here to view the full article - 671KB PDF (opens in a new window)

Visit to Sandstone Estate        

By Bob Baker

Sandstone Estate is a 7000 hectare wheat producing farm in Eastern Free State South Africa. It is also home to the Sandstone Heritage Trust and contains a 2ft gauge light railway of 26.5 route km, over 700 tractors (mostly in working order) and a selection of military machinery.

In 2009 Sandstone Estate called for expressions of interest for "MEGAPOWER 2010" a week long event showcasing its heritage equipment. After 300 expressions of interest were received it was decided to run the event, however it was later cancelled when only 33 paid a deposit. As an act of good faith to those who had paid the deposit, Wilfred Mole (the owner of Sandstone Estate) decided to run a smaller private vent just highlighting the railway.

In an attempt to keep the costs down, Wilfred elected to use volunteer train crews made up from the event guests to run the trains. Paul WIllemse and I forwarded our qualifications, including the BBR steam instruments. These were accepted by the Rail Safety Authorities in South Africa for operating at Sandstone. As a result of the Iceland Volcano eruption, 10 members of Welsh Highland Railway, who were to make up the majority of the crews, were marooned in UK and could not attend leavng only 4 visiting crew members supplemented by the workshops staff at Sandstone. Paul and I were 2 of those crew members.

During the week all 17 working steam locomotives at Sandstone were in steam at some time. The locomotives ranged from small 0-4-0 tank locomotives, to NG15 and 4 NGG16 Garratts. Sandstone has a working example of NGG Garratt from each of the manufacturers. Paul and I were able to drive and/or fire 10 of the locomotives during the event. It was steam heaven.

Highlights included double-headed running of Garratts and 2 trips around the Vailima Loop, a 4.2km section of line with a rulling grade of 1:20 using one Garrat and a consist of 6 wagons expertly driven by Gert, the steam operations manager at Sandstone, and a fitter, Derik, as his fireman. Train consists of up to 14 wagons were made up during the event. Photographers made up the majority of the guests and run parts were organised for each train that ran. Unfortunately Paul and I were unable to obtain a lot of photos or video of the train run pasts due to our participation on the footplate, (but who's complaining)  however Wilfred is arranging a collage of the best 1000 photographs by the photographers to be forwarded.

The hospitality at Sandstone was magnificent. Paul and I were treated like kings.

Should another similar event be run at Sandstone, we thoroughly recommend a visit to what is conceivably the best collection of working narrow gauge steam locomotives in the world running in such a picturesque setting. If we get the chance again, we will be there!

For further photographs from the event go to www.sandstone-estates.com and click on the article “private steam week”.

Click on the image to view a large version of the article

Sandstone Heritage Trust - Rail News

RN 77 - Excerpts from Steam Railway Magazine, UK, April 22 - May 19 2005 - No. 309

We were delighted to see the Sandstone mention on pages 96 and 97, "The second rescue operation in Free State Province" in this particular issue of the Steam Railway Magazine. There is also a mention of the St. Helena "Great Escape". Impressive! We have gained permission to republish this article on our website from the journalist, David Thornhill and the Publisher of the magazine, Tony Streeter.
Please click on the images to read the full article.
Credit to journalist David Thornhill. Copyright Steam Railway magazine.

Sandstone Choo-Tjoes!

An article on Sandstone appeared in The Mountain Post recently.

Click here to view the article in full - 604KB (opens in a new window)

GMAM Garratt No. 4079 'Lyndie Lou' featured in Reefsteamers Depot Report

Here is the latest Reefsteamers Depot Report covering the work day of Saturday, 27 March 2010.  This photographic report is primarily focussed on the GMAM Garratt No.4079 ‘Lyndie Lou’, as well as some photos of the very nearly complete Class 15F No. 3046. 

Click here to view the Depot Report - 3MB PDF (opens in new window)

Sandstone Heritage Trust - News

HTN 41 - Old Glory Magazine - Issue No. 188 October 2005

(September 15th - October 19th 2005)

Article on Sandstone - "Steam on the South African Veldt"

Article reproduced from Old Glory magazine October 2005, with permission.