African Steam Trains

A nice action shot of a South African 4-8-2, 19D 3362 hurrying along right in the centre of the country absolutely miles from anywhere, the nearest place being Flips Kop, if you can find it on any map good luck. We seemed to end up in lots of these locations but they were well worth it for the scenery. It was a good job we had some good maps, and our camper van never broke down as we would have

Here we have a South African 4-8-2. 15F 1998 seen south of Ficksburg working the 08.55 Bethlehem to Bloemfontain with 14 coaches in tow. There were 257 of these engines built by various company’s, this one being constructed by the North British Locomotive works, Glasgow, and they were found all over the S.A. main line system. This engine was from the depot at Beaufort West and was a bit out of its area for some reason, probably borrowed by Bloemfontain.

I have sent this one to show the grandeur of the scenery rather than the train itself. So here we have a South African 4-8-2 class 19B 1410 (it looks very smart but they never seemed to clean the tenders for some reason) working the 09.00 freight from Rosemead to Graff Reinet which is drifting down hill from Lootsberg a lonely isolated passing point on the summit of this line. The train will have been assisted in the rear by

I have sent this one to show the grandeur of the scenery rather than the train itself. So here we have a South African 4-8-2 class 19B 1410 (it looks very smart but they never seemed to clean the tenders for some reason) working the 09.00 freight from Rosemead to Graff Reinet which is drifting down hill from Lootsberg a lonely isolated passing point on the summit of this line. The train will have been assisted in the rear by

Big country big engine. Two pictures of South African Railways condensing class 25-3506 4-8-4. All of the class were mechanical stokers. Heading north at the isolated station of Biesiesport with a Beaufort West to De Aar freight probably returning empty coal wagons on the single track main line up from Cape Town. Five huge fans were on the tender top to cool the exhaust steam back into water and then returned it back into the tender tank. A fan drew

This is diamond country, South Africa. Here are the vast plains between Kimberley and Bloemfontain in fact it was like this every where inland in SA. A class 25NC (non condenser) 4-8-4 is working a freight to Bloemfontain on Monday 17th September 1973. It looks flat country but in fact the train was on a long climb along single line to Olienhoutplaat where it would pass a west bound freight to Kimberley. We had left our camper van on the