General News

The Cherry Festival 2025

250420 171103

For some time the Sandstone Heritage Trust has been in discussions with the Railway Safety Regulator regarding the fact that we ,as a small, private, closed loop 2ft Narrow Gauge steam railway,  are having to comply with the same specification as large freight trains operating coast to coast on the National Railway network. In order to complete the very detailed questionnaires and to comply with the substantial amount of administration regarding the above, we are obliged to keep a number of people busy, almost all year round.  Due to rising costs and the fact that, in our opinion, we should not be regulated by that particular set of specifications, we have been forced to postpone all events until further notice. 

The Sandstone Cosmos and Honey Easter Festival, photo gallery 2

IMG 20250418 WA0000

This is the second of our two galleries celebrating our recent Cosmos and Honey Easter Festival with some wonderful photography from our visitors and volunteers.

Our thanks to: Hayley Mole, Dennis Green, Yolandi Schreuder, Brendan Nixon, Gerald Nichol, Jeandre Gordon, Thinus Dennis, Martin Oberholzer, Shawn Spaan, James Attwell, Dave Richardson, Wilfred Mole, Brodie Bennett, Bianca van Rooyen and Rudolf Pretorius.

The Sandstone Cosmos and Honey Easter Festival, a photo gallery

IMG 20250415 WA0001

 This is the first of two galleries celebrating our recent Cosmos and Honey Easter Festival with some wonderful photography from our visitors and volunteers.

Our thanks to: Hayley Mole, Dennis Green, Yolandi Schreuder, Brendan Nixon, Gerald Nichol, Jeandre Gordon, Thinus Dennis, Martin Oberholzer, Shawn Spaan, James Attwell, Dave Richardson, Wilfred Mole, Brodie Bennett, Bianca van Rooyen and Rudolf Pretorius.

Stimela Events Photo Gallery

250419 102941 2

A photo gallery by Stimela Events from the recent Sandstone Easter Cosmos and Honey Festival. Run by James Attwell, this group organises photo charters to varied events and has been a regular visitor to Sandstone. Enjoy the picture show!

Vintage Aircraft Flights at the Easter Cosmos and Honey Festival. 17th to 20th April 2025.

a0f4ceab ffdb 41bd 9c15 95e3ef7fc974

We shall be offering flights on a Tiger Moth for R2500 and a Boeing Stearman for R3500 at the upcoming Easter Cosmos and Honey Festival.

Kalahari Sunrise. A new posting on YouTube.

This video was produced by Frameline Productions to celebrate the Kalahari Sunrise photographic event held at Sandstone Estates in South Africa in 2012. The video captures the essence of the event which celebrated the use of Sandstone's 1931 NG15 type 2ft narrow gauge locomotive, South African Railways number 17, built by Henschel in Germany for the 2ft gauge railway system in South West Africa.

The Sandstone Steam Railway Video Gallery


Sandstone on YouTube1

Recently we did a bit of detective work to track down all the videos of The Sandstone Steam Railway on YouTube. It’s not as easy as you may think as some of the titles do not always mention Sandstone and the YouTube search engine can miss them! Anyway we have catalogued 148 separate videos including three from Alan Middleditch he has just posted of the recent FarRail International Tour to Sandstone. We hope you enjoy watching these productions that capture the essence of The Sandstone Steam Railway.

Boer War Stories

GENERAALSNEK

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

IMG 20241118 WA0007

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..