Recent weather events at Sandstone Estates led to a unique harvesting approach for the Soya crop from way back in time. Click here to read more
One of Sandstone’s long time European supporters is Svatopluk Slechta, an engineer from the Czech Republic and a great rail enthusiast. He has visited Sandstone many times on his tours of South Africa, most recently at our Easter Steam Festival. We were pleased and honoured to be presented with a brass Skoda works plate by him. Today most people imagine that Skoda, founded in 1859 by Emil Skoda, just made cars but, in years gone by, they also built many steam locomotives including a batch of South African Railways (SAR) 19D class. To this day they are still in the rail transportation arena producing trams and propulsion units for trolleybuses, albeit now a separate company from the car manufacturing arm.
Svata, as he is known, is also currently writing a book on the history of Skoda steam locomotives and was looking for assistance in obtaining pictures of the fifteen Skoda built 19D locomotives. These were manufactured in 1938 and carried SAR numbers 2626 to 2640. Three examples survive today of which number 2633 is plinthed at Sandstone. This was sold by the SAR in the 1980s to become Sappi No. 2. It was donated to Sandstone in 2019.
Through our connections with railway photographers, both in South Africa and overseas, we were able to obtain a large number of photographs of Skoda 19Ds in service in South Africa. Sandstone’s thanks Svata, for his generosity and wishes him well with his new book.
Our gallery shows the presentation of the Skoda plate to Sandstone, L to R, Mike Myers and Dave Richardson from Sandstone and Svata Slechta.
Our second picture shows Skoda built 19D number 2633 plinthed at Sandstone.
Sandstone has two of these fascinating steam powered drilling machines. Both are with a restorer in the Western Cape where it is hoped to build one out of two. Click here to read the full story.
Rewilding is a progressive approach to conservation which we support at Sandstone Estates. It is about letting nature take care of itself and enabling nature’s magical ability to heal itself.
By rewilding we allow nature to create undisturbed biodiverse habitats.
100% of the complex that you are in at the moment was put down to lawn or brick paving or roads. That is changing. We only cut lawns where people need to move around and we only cut grass if we think that there is a potential for a fire risk. Apart from that we will let nature dictate what it would like to see growing in a specific area.
If you walk into an area that was previously a cut lawn but which has now gone wild, you will discover a place that is alive with reptiles, small mammals, birds and of course insects. The only intelligent thing that man can do is to leave these areas alone – do not go there, do not walk there and do not disturb them. Our complex is big enough that one does not need to take short cuts through rewilding areas because we have cut pathways to accommodate that.
Torsten and Ilona Eggert from Germany arrived at Sandstone on Freedom Day, 27th April, with their Hanomag camper van that they restored themselves to travel the world. They started their journey in 2017.This year they arrived via ship at Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) and started their journey through northern Africa and SA and then back to Gqeberha to take a ship back to Germany. Torsten Eggert has a passion for Hanomag and Lanz Bulldog machinery, so our Visitor Coordinator, Mariette Palmer, took him to the tractor shed area and he was all over/underneath/on top of the Lanz machinery and couldn't believe that Sandstone has such a variety of items. He advised that his home in Germany is just 20km away from the original Lanz Bulldog factory that was later bought by John Deere. There they have a lot of show days where all friends come together and display their pride and joy machinery. He advised that the crawler in the Sandstone collection is a very rare item. At the conclusion of their visit they asked that we thank the owner for all the kindness and friendliness they experienced at Sandstone. Sandstone thanks Torsten and Ilona for their visit and wishes them a safe journey back to Germany.
You can follow their adventures on their web page eggert-koronczi.de It’s in German but can be translated and follows their travels around the world.
Keith Simmons has been a regular visitor to Sandstone for many years and assisted us with some of the technicalities of our web site when we moved service providers and webmaster some years ago. He has a passion for Stationary Engines and has brought his small Stirling Engine to many events at Sandstone including Stars of Sandstone 2019 and our recent Easter Steam Festival. The attached PDF from Keith describes the Stirling while the attached photo illustrates the size of the Stirling, Click here and enjoy the read!
As you will see from the attached file, Inaugural World Wickham Day, Friday 22 April 20022, recognises 100 years of Wickham rail vehicles. In South Africa, Sandstone Heritage Trust is the proud owner of 2ft gauge Wickham Trolley number 9234, built in 1962. This is an open Type 27 Mk111. This was originally supplied to Pretoria Portland Cement in Pretoria, South Africa in November 1962 and acquired by Sandstone some 20 years ago. It has been re engined with a Toyota diesel engine and gearbox. Sandstone also has four unidentified Type 27 Mk111 2 ft gauge of the closed type which were acquired from Sena Sugar in 2004.
Leon Hugo is a professional photographer from Gqeberha in South Africa and sent us a photo essay from our Easter event. As you will see from the gallery Leon braved all the conditions that the weather could throw at us to capture some magnificent images. Enjoy the show! You can contact Leon on,
