Sandstone Estates restores and ships three 2-ft Narrow Gauge flat wagons to preserved railway in Chile
With over 300 items of rolling stock in our inventory Sandstone is in a position to assist other railways with high quality 2-ft Narrow Gauge wagons which are manufactured and prepared to their specifications. The high quality of South Africa’s Narrow Gauge rolling stock and the internationally recognised Narrow Gauge bogies which go under them have created a fairly consistent demand for these items.
Sandstone would never compromise its own core Heritage stock but we have a large number of unrestored items in our salvage yard which are surplus to our requirements and therefore we believe should go back into Preservation in another location. Since there are no other really viable operating 2-ft Narrow Gauge railways in South Africa who require these items we believe that our strategy is sound. The money received from these is recycled into our locomotive and wagon refurbishment programme. For every one we export we probably refurbish and rebuild 5 for ourselves. At present we are building from scratch using very badly rusted components an NGG11 water tanker, as well as one additional Ratanga coach for our passenger operations. The photos below show the professional way in which these items are being loaded prior to shipment to Durban and then on to Chile.
