General News

The Cosmos Easter Festival 2025

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Our first event for 2025 will be The Cosmos Easter Festival. Enjoy a train ride behind double headed NGG16 Garratts for the first time since 2019 on our refurbished Vailima section. The 1913 built NG4 tank locomotive will be running an airport shuttle service to Grootdraai from Hoekfontein and Seb’s Railway will be in full operation on the game camp line.

An added attraction for the Cosmos Easter Festival

Added Attraction

 

Boer War Stories

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The area around Sandstone Estates saw significant activity during the Boer war of 1899 to 1902,the so called second Boer War. Kommando Nek which is on Sandstone’s property was an escape route for a large Boer force while the Ficksburg area saw a lot of action.

The 2024  Cherry Steam Festival

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Our 2024 Cherry Steam Festival was an outstanding success  with  record number of visitors. We carried over 2000 passenger on out two rail systems, our main line with the mighty NGG16 Garratt locomotive and Seb’s Railway with new coaches and three different engines. The fly boys were there together with our military machines , earthmoving equipment, vintage cars, buses and tractors.

Hunting for stories. “Storycatcher” from Patricia Glyn

Storycatcher

You’ll see from this video below that Patricia Glyn is on the hunt for the Southern African’s special stories for a video programme entitled “Storycatcher”. If you have one, please get in touch with her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Sandstone wins a Gold Award from the Heritage Association of South Africa.

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At the recent Clarens Heritage Association symposium, hosted on behalf of the Heritage Association of South Africa (HASA), Sandstone was honoured to receive a Gold Certificate Award for collecting, maintaining and exhibiting one of the finest collections of heritage transport and agricultural machinery in South Africa, and for ensuring that these grand examples of past implements and practices are preserved for future generations.

Rovos Rail visits Sandstone.

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Sandstone has become a regular destination for some of the prestigious Rovos Rail tours in South Africa. Whilst they cannot arrive by rail anymore, they do travel by road from Bethlehem to visit us. Last week we organised a train trip for them and as our Sherman Tank has  had its repairs completed we ran that alongside the train together with a full span of Oxen adding value to their visit.

La Bella Macchina!

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We were recently honoured with a visit by the Ferrari Club of South Africa (SEFAC). A large turnout of these beautiful machines proved that the roads to Sandstone are now in working order! Our visitors kindly made their cars available for photography as well as a group shot after they had enjoyed a safe journey to Sandstone and a tour of the Heritage Collection.

Flying into Ficksburg Airport for the Sandstone Cherry Steam Festival.

We have many visitors who fly into our Sandstone grass strip for our events. Should you wish to fly into a tar strip, Ficksburg Airport will be open for visitors and offers transport from the Airport to Sandstone. Full details are below.

Snow in September!

The unseasonal weather over the last weekend produced some wonderful views of the snow-capped Maluti Mountains from Sandstone.