Lukas and his team have added another project to the list of items being restored or INVENTED!!

Loco restoration update 

"Sandstone Estates : The Sandstone Heritage Trust - a pictorial souvenir"

Today's new book!

Very different from the large landscape format 'The Sandstone Steam Railway' that was published a year ago, this is an album that covers everything STEAM (& a few other things besides) at Sandstone.

So, locomotives obviously (including the little ones), but also traction engines, showmans engines, steam road cranes, .... it is showcased here. Even oxen and a BSA railcar and a diesel shunter (heaven forbid!).

This is all colour and a full 120 pages.

The good news is, that by utilising an 18cm square format, the price per copy of this print on demand book is under $30. ie about Rand 230 for those in South Africa.

Full details, preview, ordering etc, simply go to http://www.blurb.com/search/site_search?search=Dennis+Moore+steam

Dennis Moore

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

+27 (0) 11 764 5425  

2013 Boiler Certifications

As required by the Department of Labour in South Africa all boilers need to undergo inspection and testing on an annual basis, at Sandstone this is carried out every February. The Steam Team with the assistance of the Sandstone Bloemfontein Steam Workshops started preparing the boilers last November and worked tirelessly to ensure that all 27 boilers, which required inspection, were ready.

The contractor used by Sandstone to do the boiler certifications, Indserve, has had a long working relationship with Sandstone and have an intimate knowledge of all of the Sandstone steam assets. The excellent work carried out by Sandstone personnel ensured that all the boilers passed the required tests and the certificates were issued on the 10th of March.

This means that the locomotives including the recently completed Arn Jung and other assets selected to be operational at the Stars Of Sandston per the list below, are all A-Okay and ready to roll.

McLaren – Traction Engine

Decauville – (Bathala)

Little Bess – Kerr Stuart No.4301

O&K No.2

NGG16 - No.153

NG4 - No.16 ( Kerr Stuart)

O&K – No.4102

NGG15-  No.17

Feldbahn - Sena No. 2

Little locomotive ex Ratanga No. 262

Fowler Roller

NGG16 - No.88

O&K - No.11 (Hayley)

Kerr Stuart – No. 1344 (Tamara)

NGG6 - No.96 (Lawley)

NGG13 - No.49

Arn Jung

Peckett – (Marromeu)

Barclay

Fowler (Sandy)

Sentinel No.9178

Avonside No.2 (Sezela)

Fowler Steam Crane

Marshall Colonial Steam Tractor

NG6 – No.106 (Lawley)

Marshall Roller

To see the certificates please click here (7.79 MB)

The Sandstone Heritage Trust continues to accumulate critical spares.

The fact that Sandstone Estates was recently able to assist Sappi in Natal with 19D spares for their operational industrial 19D programme highlights the fact that Sandstone's consistent attempts over the years to work with the reclamation industry and with owners of locomotives that were being scrapped or disposed of is paying dividends.

While we cannot claim to be all things to all people we are at least able to supply our own Bloemfontein locomotive rebuild facility with much needed and valuable spares as required.

Should you have any enquiries regarding steam locomotive spare parts please contact Mike Myers at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Press Release

The Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railway in North Wales has taken delivery of six more B Wagons, originally used on the Port Shepstone-Harding line in Natal, which have been fully refurbished by Sandstone Heritage Trust’s wagon shop.

They were loaded at Durban on December 15th and arrived at Immingham Docks earlier this month, being delivered to Dinas yard on Thursday January 24th. Their purchase was funded by a specific donation from a supporter through the FR Trust.

The F&WHR already owns eight similar B Wagons, which are in daily use on both the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland lines for transporting coal, ballast, ash and brash from lineside clearance work. The six new wagons will be put to work as soon as F&WHR engineers fit them with their standard chopper couplings.

The Welsh Highland Railway and the Sandstone Heritage Trust in the Eastern Free State have enjoyed a relationship which goes almost as far back as the inception of Sandstone’s 2-ft Narrow Gauge railway in the Eastern Free State of South Africa which was constructed in the late 1990s.

"The Welsh Highland Railway already makes extensive use of railway technology sourced from South Africa, including its NG/G16 Garratt locomotives, as well as freight rolling stock," says Sandstone's Wilf Mole. 

"Our guys put an inordinate amount of work into it. We asked them to do a good job and they took it seriously. We had an independent railway professional come in and check them for flaws before they went out and he was very happy with them."

South Africa had a rich heritage of 2-ft Narrow Gauge railways which formed the backbone of the rural lines in Natal and the Eastern Cape in particular. Iconic names like the Banana Express in Natal and the Apple Express in Port Elizabeth caught the attention of Narrow Gauge enthusiasts for many years and were popular photographic destinations for railway enthusiasts. 

Some years ago the Banana Express closed and the Apple Express has been inoperative as a railway for some time due to political issues, lack of finance, and disruption to the line through weather related activities.

By contrast, the Sandstone Heritage Trust, which operates a 26-km 2-ft Narrow Gauge railway on a private agricultural estate in a fairly remote part of South Africa adjacent to the Lesotho border, had continued to grow and to expand. 

The South African National Railway authority, Transnet, has been issuing tenders over a number of years relating to the disposal of narrow gauge assets. Sandstone, in order to build its own collection of the iconic South African narrow gauge rolling stock, bid on many of these tenders and was successful. 

Sandstone also reached agreement with South Africa’s largest reclamation company, Reclam, to acquire wagons and spares parts for items that they have purchased from the railways. The result is a very large collection of freight wagons, arguably far too many to ever be used by Sandstone itself. 

"The logistics of getting them to Durban was not easy," adds Wilf. "We transported the wagons ourselves using our Freightliner and my own personal Kenworth, which our General Manager drove to Durban and back twice. 

"We believe these wagons will make a very useful contribution to Welsh Highland Railway’s operational efficiency and will provide an added attraction for the many supporters and followers who enjoy visiting this world class railway in North Wales."

The WHR now has the potential to run a Garratt-hauled recreation of a full length train of SAR bogie freight stock, together with the newly-restored SAR brake van – a piece of South African railway history in the mountains of Snowdonia.

For further details contact Joanne West at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. +44 1766 516072

http://www.festrail.co.uk/content/publish/news/New_wagons_arrive_from_South_Africa.shtml
 

Our wonderful old Victorian railway station which was originally erected at Kommandonek in 1907 has just  received a new coat of paint on its ancient corrugated iron roof. 

Our thanks go to Keith Rose, our architect, for thinking of such an innovative colour.

Sandstone’s 2-ft Narrow Gauge infrastructure continues to expand.

Below are a number of aerial photographs taken of the main Sandstone Estates complex. We have focussed on railway related activities in these pictures.


Photo 1 caption: This is the huge 150 metre long locomotive storage shed that was moved from Ficksburg and was used for many years to store our collection of 3’6” locomotives. We still have the floor to complete but it is in use. There is room for at least two more storage lines so in theory everything we own can go under cover now.

Photo 2 caption: This is an excellent photo showing the three main Heritage buildings at Sandstone. The one on the left contains traction engines and classic agricultural machinery. The middle one is the Running shed, and the one to the right contains our coaches and valuable items of rolling stock.  Unrestored locomotives which were previously restored here have already been moved to the big new ex Ficksburg shed.

Photo 3 caption: This gives an idea of the marshalling yard on the Vailima side of the complex.

Hunslet No. 6355.

The Hunslet’s Gardner 6LW engine has now been replaced with one that has been overhauled. This should make this invaluable locomotive perform to specification and go back to work within the fleet. It is our primary engine for shunting jetty’s.

However, our little Funkey, being a re-engineered Mine locomotive, has been invaluable in the interim. The photograph below shows the Funkey arriving back from spraying the line as part of our on-going weed prevention and maintenance programme.

Wren Locos

By Robin Lake in South Africa 

There are a couple of tenuous leads pointing to the possibility of Kerr, Stuart & Co Ltd “Wren” class locomotives being used on the fourteen kilometre long 60 cm gauge service line laid from Brits West to Hartbeespoort Dam during the building of the latter over 1918-1925.

In 1921 the Director of Irrigation reported that in March of that year two steam locomotives were secured “from the Air Force Authorities” for use on the line. 

From KS records we know that four Wrens were consigned to “SAR Delagoa Bay” (no date given but before 1930), namely works numbers 4006, 4013, 4014 and 4015. This is gleaned from a manuscript entry alongside these numbers in the KS engine register. However, the KS shipping specification ledgers bear no evidence of such a consignment. This suggests that some party other than KS arranged the export of these four Wrens.

Sleeper car project - Coach No 29. Built 1907
 

One of the benefits of having attempted where possible to save Narrow Gauge assets over the last 20-years is the fact we have accumulated items of considerable interest, much of which tends to go unnoticed and very often unappreciated. 

The Sandstone Heritage Trust has a very interesting and historic compartment carriage which may well have been used for overnight accommodation. It is particularly long for a 2-ft Narrow Gauge wagon/carriage, coming in at 9.2 metres. The pictures below clearly indicate that it has obviously been badly treated in its life but can be rebuilt. 

Diagram published with kind permission from Phil Girdlestone

An enthusiastic visitor to the farm recently pointed out that in his opinion this coach was of significance, and so it turned out to be through the excellent support of Leith Paxton in particular, as well as Phil Girdlestone, we were able to identify, within 24-hours, what it is that we had in stock. 

It is No. 29, an NG N-6, which was built in 1907. This particular series of extended length coaches came in a number of configurations, all of which appear in various drawings below.  However, we have a drawing of No. 29 itself, which will form the basis of our restoration project.  In the gallery of photos below are pictures of the coach as it is now followed by photographs supplied by Leith Paxton of a number of variants of coaches from that particular production run. 

Author unknown - Leith Paxton collection

The configuration of this coach lends itself to a combined sleeping (en suite) and dining/lounge facility. 

Inadvertently we appear to be able to create a mini Rovos Rail or Orient Express on the 2-ft
Narrow Gauge. 

Although overnight trains are rare at the Sandstone Heritage Trust we are always in need of accommodation and this wagon could be used for that purpose. 

Work should commence on this wagon after our Stars of Sandstone event in May this year.

Sandstone's sunflowers are blooming.

Renowned photographer, Tessa Joughin, who lives in Ficksburg, took time out from her busy schedule to photograph the sunflowers at Sandstone this week. In order to provide her with VIP transport we rolled out our 1913 BSA Rail car which complemented the sunflowers and enhanced the photographic experience. Tessa enjoyed it immensely.

Thanks Tessa for some great photographs.

Some years ago we built a mobile sand blasting unit designed to sandblast railway related items. However, the demand for its services declined over the years.

Recently due to an upsurge in activities including the building of the first of a number of railway cottages we had an opportunity to recycle old window frames and to sandblast them using our mobile sandblasting unit.

We had almost forgotten we had the capability to do this.

New book by Dennis Moore - Black Diamonds

We are pleased to advise another excellent title is available from Dennis Moore.  See below for details:

"BLACK DIAMONDS - Steam Locomotives at work on the colliery railways of South Africa"

'Black Diamonds" ... is a colloquialism often used in South Africa to describe the coal produced in an industry that is one of the most important to the country. The modern image is, of course, of the 200+ high capacity wagons formed into block liner trains moving prodigious loads of the mineral to Richards Bay for export. However, there is a considerable domestic need as well, not least for coal fired power stations, which continue to be built in the seemingly never ending demand of the nation for more electricity.

There are huge collieries that have never had a private railway operation, these being served by adjacent rapid loading terminals from where the output is railed directly by the national railway carrier. Others are built close to major users, such as power stations and, for example, the Sasol plants, where the coal is taken directly in by conveyor. At the other end of the scale are smaller mines that have always relied on road transport. Between all these however, lies the subject matter of this book : those collieries that used their own railway system to handle their output (and / or stores traffic) to the nearest exchange yard with South African Railways. More specifically, those that used their own steam 'Black Diamonds' to haul their trains. Not all were black, of course, although all were true gems of the steam age. Specialised industrial locomotives were in the minority in this industry, although they had an important role to play. Primarily, locomotive classes long since extinct on South African Railways could be found slogging away still earning their keep right through to the middle 1990s. The lively text is also filled with interesting anecdotes and technical and historical information. This hefty volume presents a long overdue pictorial tribute to these workhorses.

For full details, please visit www.blurb.com and enter Dennis Moore steam in the search engine.

Our Hunslet Diesel receives some serious TLC

Our ex Mines Hunslet Diesel has been the backbone of our railway since we acquired it many years ago from the Midmar Museum in Natal.  Its build date is 14.1.1984 so it is already a respectable 28 years old.

The 6LW Gardner engine in the Hunslet was very tired and so we have done effectively a full engine transport using the engine from a Broomwade compressor that is in tip-top condition.  See the picture below.

While we are about it we will be attending to a number of other issues with respect to the Hunslet now that the sub frame, axles, and drive train have been revealed.  When complete the locomotive will then be resprayed and should look as new for Stars of Sandstone in 2013.