Sandstone Heritage Trust – Rail News
RN 143 – Weekly Steamshed Report – 27th – 31st December 2005 – By Gert Jubileus
17th January 2006
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| We also had to prepare wash out the Colonial Steam tractor, Marshall Roller and two portables for the Harvest Festival. | |
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SANDSTONE STEAM RAILWAY WAGONS All the B wagons that were converted to FZ type wagons were foamed with the special foam to prevent them from leaking the wheat out when they harvest into them. Here are some photos of the B wagons: |
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| All the wagons were shunted in the planned consists for the weekend and all the passenger coaches were cleaned as well. | |
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THE RAILWAY LINE
Before each event, we take the Wickham to do a Rail inspection, and all the problems are rectified if found. Here is Derrick busy securing bolts on the points. |
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GENERAL All the Vintage tractors in the Vintage Shed were cleaned this week. |
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OFFLOADING OF BLOEMFONTEIN LOCOMOTIVE SPARES We offloaded the frames and parts of locomotives that came from the Bloemfontein works this week. This trailer was needed to transport wheat from the lands to the Sandstone Estates Mills. |
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The Harvest Festival
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| The Harvest Festival started with a train ride on Old Year’s Day. We used the Class NGG16 number 113 to haul this special passenger train. The train departed at 17H40 and a complete roundtrip was taken. Below is number 113 shunting out the passenger coaches from the wagon shed late the Saturday afternoon, a rare sight to see a Garratt in the wagon shed. |
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| The train then departed again just before 23H00 to Grootdraai on the Lesotho border. It was really a dark night and the rain was poring a blessing to the almost New Year. | |
SATURDAY Saturday was the little locomotive day and we steamed the Lawley, O&K, Little Bess and the Decauville locomotive for this day. The Lawley was booked on the passenger service for the day while the Decauville and Little Bess double headed the Little Bess coach to Grootdraai. Here are some photos of the little locomotives: |
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Above: on the left are Shaun and Pat Ackerman who came a long way to help us with the
driving of these locomotives. |
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Above: On the right is Phillip Maurer with Little Bess.
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Above: The Lawley with Driver Pat Ackerman working the Passenger service.
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Above: Driver Dave Richardson on the O&K on his way to Grootdraai!
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The Lawley
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| Above: The Britannia raising steam. | |
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| Driver Dave Richardson on the right and fireman Gary Barnes on the left, in front of the Barclay, about to depart working double head with the Lawley. On Saturday afternoon, we again had a train on a roundtrip and Class NGG 16 Number 113 was used again. The train was worked by driver Shaun Ackerman and fireman Phillip Maurer. The train just arrived in time for a delightful “Braai” at the Waenhuis. |
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From the Past
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| Above is a photo of number 1, Class 16Cr now owned by Sandstone Estates. This photo was taken in the shunting yard in Welkom late in 1993. This used to be a very busy siding and we use to get not less than 30 freight wagons a day. It was needed to have a special shunting locomotive in those years. The class 14CRB was mainly used for the shunting, but was withdrawn only days before this photo was taken. The class 14CRB was “Accidentally” cut up by a scrap dealer who bought 3 Class 16Cr’s. St Helena G.M had a fleet of seven Class 16Cr’s and two Class 14CRB’s. | |
| PLANNING FOR NEXT WEEK 1.) To clean all the locomotives that was used. 2.) To clean all the ash puts. 3.) To clean all coaches 4.) Clean all portable boilers in Vintage shed 5.) To shunt all wagons back to the wagon shed. 6.) To offload Ratanga wagons 7.) To move 3”6’ wagons from Kommandonek 8.) Drain boilers 9.) To prepare boilers for Boiler Inspections 10.) To do repairs on locomotives 11.) To start with the restoration of Ratanga coaches. |
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Steam Greetings and a Happy New Steam Year! Gert
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