The Sandstone Steam Railway is well served by access roads which enable photographers to get to many varied locations. Of course very often those on the road become subjects of photography from the train. In this short video clip from Stars of Sandstone 2019, with the train running alongside the airfield, we see Peter George and Susan Hesketh in their 1928 Chevrolet Coupe which they brought from Swaziland for the event. The next sequence is UK visitor, Gordon Fry, trundling along in Sandstone’s 1947 MG TC. Amazing views from a train!
In January this year we published a list of our Stationary Engine Collection, see: The_Stationary_Engine_Collection.pdf (sandstone-estates.com)
Our pride and joy is the National Engine from 1935.
Sandstone’s two Lawleys, BR7 and NG97, are the inspirations for the new Accucraft models.
Accucraft are famous for their live steam models and David Fletcher visited us some time ago to measure up our Decauville for a model. Now they are proposing a 1:19 scale model of the Lawley locomotive with drawings by David Fletcher and information from Andries Keyser, a good friend of Sandstone. You can see full details of the project at the following link:
https://www.accucraft.uk.com/products/lawley-beira-sar-falcon-4-4-0/
For a view of the Decauville model please click on the following link:
Sandstone’s Decauville 0-4-0T live steam model in 7/8ths scale. (sandstone-estates.com)
On the 23 June we showed our CAT 621 scraper taking on a new coat of paint. See Spraying the CAT and rescuing the Combine. (sandstone-estates.com)
Our picture today shows the Scraper stepping out resplendent in its new bright yellow livery.
To celebrate the Springbok’s victory over the British & Irish Lions on their recent tour of South Africa, our Funkey Diesel has been given a makeover in green and gold!
Many years ago a wonderful retired farmer Jannie du Toit from the Western Cape gifted his collection to the Sandstone Heritage Trust. Sandstone already had a reasonable cross section of International Harvester products and so we decided to consolidate all International Harvester products into one facility. A special building was designated for the purpose and today it houses a wide variety of International Harvester products. These include tractors going back as far as the Mogul, the first tractor produced by International Harvester. The tractor range is considerable and is representative of probably 90% of the tractor types made by this company. It is complimented by a wide variety of implements including balers, reapers, mowers, etc., in additional we have an International Harvester service truck which came from a genuine International Harvester dealer in Natal. We compliment this with a grader. All in all it does provide a very excellent representation of the products supplied by this wonderful company.
We produce so much publicity material at Sandstone that we sometimes tend to forget what is in our archives. Some years ago we produced this introductory video on our Sherman which also includes archive footage of World War 2 etc. It was designed to be informative and will provide most people with an understanding of the importance of the Sherman.
The spectacular closing scene is the demolition of a house that we no longer required at Sandstone Estates in the Eastern Free State.
The UK magazine, Tractor and Farming Heritage, has run two articles on Sandstone using classic tractors in an everyday environment.
Read Part 1 and Part 2 from the August 2021 and September 2021 editions.