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Looks like those locos are working upgrade, just look at the exhaust from the stacks. If the location is indeed City View then the train is heading away from Pmb towards Alberts Falls and Greytown.

Sorry, yes you are right. I have checked my old pics from 1974 and the halt is on the first right ...

As I mentioned on the Garratts Yahoo group, this pic does indeed look like it was taken at City View on the Greytown line out of Pietermaritzburg, with a 'dubbelkop' returning down the grade.

The ruling gradient on this line was 1 in 33 to 1 in 30, and may well have been uncompensated for curvature ...

Second class on UK railways died out around 1908, leaving only first and third for several decades until 3rd was redesignated 2nd, eventually becoming standard class in recent more marketing-conscious days.

Martin Coombs

I had been wondering where to post my thanks for FoTR's hospitality last weekend. This is now the obvious place.

You did a great job guys. Thanks for all the steam, and food, and coffee, and for Trainman's jokes (honest!). It was a wonderful evening, and with an excellent second round of ...

Hi Aidan,

Though looking at Stefan's third picture there are certainly additional hoses beneath the coupler, other than the vac pipes higher up. Well, maybe there was a fault.

Martin

Maybe a silly question, but do the Class 33s have air brakes? If not, then there's your answer.

Back in the 1970s, before the ore line was built, the manganese trains came down to PE by way of Kimberley, De Aar, Noupoort, and the Cape Midland main line. 100 wagons at 80 tons apiece behind five or ...

Hi Owen.

Nice to see another WHR engineman here; and congratulations on the pic. Impressive.

Martin

S2s were one of three SAR steam classes to have tenders longer than the loco. I'll leave you to work which the other two were.

Holland suggests that after Krupp won the contract to build them they found it couldn't be done within the specified weight, and thus there had too be a drastic rethink and ...

In 1967 I was at college in Newcastle and had my digs out on the coast at Whitley Bay. I traveled by train (DMU) every day and knew the station well. The trains I took used to run out from where the car park now is. On boarding the train I used to take the seat right behind the driver so I could ...

Whilst I too regret the loss of the complexities of Newcastle upon Tyne station's east junction, let's put it into context: the suburban network out to the coast, which utilised the platforms now turned into car-park, was de-electrified in the late '60s and then became the basis of the Tyneside ...

Normally SAR cabside plates had a raised rim on the rear, which spread inwards at the ends to make two almost semi-circular bosses, within which the bolt holes came through. These ensured that when the bolts were tightened up the cabside plating wasn't distorted by being pulled into the space within ...

Having returned from work, I have more time to think about this.

The visible marks around the running numbers suggest to me that this plate was cast using a multi-use pattern, with the running numbers and necessary spacers slotted in as appropriate. I believe SAR workshops had such patterns made of ...

I will leave others to comment on the photo of a 24 masquerading as a shunter, my interest is more in the supposed cabside number-plate.

A first glance takes in the numbers obviously dropped into place with the rectangular base shapes still apparent - not usually seen on those made by the loco ...

Now this takes me back...

In October '74 I was technically a fireman at Port Elizabeth, though actually on relief in Natal at the time.

First, the station at night, as shown in the photo: when on a station pilot link there was one unusual early evening task. We would be asked to run light engine ...

Are you sure about the yellow rail-mounted Landy being a Santana? It looks very much like a Minerva. These were a Belgian-built derivative of the early Series 1 80" wheelbase model, constructed under licence for the Belgian army in about 1952. The main difference from the British-built vehicles was ...