A Visit to Sandstone Estates in South Africa as a VIP

Jan. 30, 2009 - PRLog -- You might just be wondering how did it happen, and I keep asking this myself but it goes something like this:

It all started with a book ‘The Two foot Gauge Enigma – Beira Railway 1890 – 1900 by Anthony Baxter Plateway Press 1998.

This tells the story of the funding, construction, the rolling stock and operation of the two hundred and twenty-two mile Beira (Mozambique) to Umtali (Zimbabwe) Railway.  It was constructed in 1890 to a gauge of two foot gauge but was later converted to 3ft 6inch ‘Cape Gauge’ in 1900.

What I discovered from reading this book was that it was operated by a number of steam locomotives all built in the UK and exported to Beira.  They included some tank engines for its construction and then an initial order of three 0-6-0 tender engines followed by further orders for another thirty-nine 4-4-0 tender engines.  I really liked the look of these 4-4-0 locos as the photos of them in the book gave me the appearance of a sort of two foot gauge version of the City of Truro.  The other intriguing fact was the sheer number of them: forty-two, and more or less identical. To me, they can be designated as one of the few ‘classes’ of two foot locos built. The locos eventually were referred to as ‘The Lawleys’ after one of the contractors who built the railway and I believe was involved in disposing of them when the line was re-gauged.

Kerr Stuart of Kilmarnock was originally appointed for the supply of equipment including all the track and rolling stock. The company  in turn sub-contracted out the construction of the early batches of locomotives to the Brush Electrical Engineering company at the Falcon Engineering works at Loughborough and later the last batch of ten locomotives were in turn sub-contracted by Brush to the Glasgow Engineering Company.

From one of the appendices in the book it looked that a small number of the forty-two Lawleys had escaped the scrap-mens torches and survived.  Subsequent searches in various books and the internet indicated that possibly two had found their way to the Rampton Trust’s very private collection of narrow gauge steam locomotives in Surrey England.  Enthusiasts like me in the UK were never ever like to see these two as it is a very private collection.  However, from Baxter’s book it appeared there were at least five still in Africa:  two in Bulawayo in Zimbabwe and another three in South Africa.

It was possibly during these web-searches that I came across the Sandstone Heritage Trust’s web site for the first time and started following the development of the Trust’s great work that it was doing in saving, storing and restoring all sorts of South African heritage but in particular its saving of South Africa’s two foot gauge railway heritage alongside Cape Gauge railway locomotives, rolling stock and equipment.

So you can imagine my pleasure when I discovered that one of the South African Lawleys was to be preserved to running order and I followed with great interest its restoration on the web-site.

When its restoration was complete I then bought the Trust’s Song of the Rails DVD and marvelled at all the sights and sounds of the Trust’s work and its scenes on the Lawley and the construction of the Dining car.

My wife and I are not great travellers; we take our holidays on the UK canal system and brief sojourns across the channel to France and so I followed with great interest development of the Trust’s work but with a sort of resigned feeling of, well, Ill never get to see all this tremendous work and I thought that was it.

However I was still very interested in these locos and I wanted a reminder of the restoration of 106 so I commissioned a railway artist, Jonathan Clay, to paint me a picture of the Lawley with the Dining car behind it.  The original is in my study here at home, but I then sent three prints of the painting to Sandstone: one to Wilf Mole, one to the Sandstone workshop where it had been restored and one to the chap who had built the dining car.  I was pleased but very surprised to see it featured on the web-site and so it was that I started my contact with Wilf.

I genuinely thought I would never get to South Africa to see Sandstone but in 2004 our son Tom, met Kate, a lovely South African girl.  One thing lead to another Kate became his girlfriend and in August 2008 Tom eventually obtained a three-year work permit and got work in Durban where is now staying to be close to her. .

It was at this point that my wife said we would take the holiday of a lifetime and spend  Christmas & the New Year in South Africa and go and visit him and Kate.  My daughter, also named Kate, said that she would join us as well.

The only flights our travel agent could book us were Saturday 13th August on an overnight flight to Johannesburg and so I started looking at the map of South Africa and the location of Jo’burg, Sandstone & Durban.  

I then realised that the only day I could get to Sandstone was Monday 15th December and so I contacted Sandstone and asked whether I could just visit and view the collection on that day.

It was a wonderful surprise when I got the reply that yes of course I could go and view the collection but that for a contribution to expenses I could also have a train as well! It was during these exchanges that I realised that the Lawleys (Sandstone had restored a second No 97 in 2008) were not powerful enough to traverse the 1:20 gradients on the Valima loop but that the 2-6-4T NG 4 (Kerr Stuart 1344/1913) could.  This would need a train of two wagons, the Dining Car and the Brake Van to provide enough braking capacity for the descending some of the other steep downward gradients of 1:22.

I was faced with, for me, a very difficult choice: either a train behind a Lawley and not travel the whole line or the NG 4 and the whole line including the climbing the 1:20. After a lot of thought I accepted the offer of the NG4 – I had followed it’s restoration on the web-site – it was an historic South African NG locomotive built in the UK by Kerr Stuart in the year (1913) both my late father and mother were born.

Having seen the DVD with the construction of the Dining Car I was very honoured to be offered the use of this carriage in the train.  It meant that my family could join me for the trip, we could eat our packed lunches in it and photos could be taken from the balconies at either end.

...continued on web page - www.sandstone-estates.com

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The Sandstone Heritage Trust is funded entirely by the Trustees without any outside assistance. However the demands being made on us are growing all the time and we do need to give some thought to the revenue model. Our site is popular because it is dynamic and as a result we are considering some funding options, including working with Google to provide a scenario where the site generates revenue which will go straight back into preservation.