Sandstone has a long association with the James Hall Museum of Transport and they have extended an invite to all for a photographic exhibition on May 24th on the History of Trams in Johannesburg. Well worth a visit.
The second of our Garratt locomotives to require retubing, NGG13 number 49, had had its boiler section split from the engine units and loaded on the Sandstone lowbed for transport to Reefsteamers in Germiston who have been contracted to do the retubing. Although we retubed NGG16 number 113 at Bloemfontein, the pressure is now on there to complete the NG10 number 61 hence we have contracted out the retube of 49.
The locomotive will arrive at Germiston on Tuesday 15th May with the repairs due to begin in June.
A replica of the world’s largest traction engine ever built, the Case 150HP of 1904, is nearing completion.
Click on the link below to see this amazing project :
https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2018/05/08/after-a-dozen-years-replica-of-worlds-largest-traction-engine-to-debut/?refer=news
We have many photographs of NG10 number 61 in service in Port Elizabeth thanks to Leith Paxton who extensively photographed the narrow gauge system in the Eastern Cape in the late 50’s and 60’s. We also have, courtesy of Leith, a copy of the original Baldwin works photograph of number 61 as constructed. This clearly shows the fitment of a front window in the cab but after many years in service with the SAR this had been removed and plated over as the picture of number 61 at Humewood Road in 1961 shows. The theory is that this glass was very susceptible to breakage in service and was thus removed. Our decision is to fit the window as originally built to number 61, probably with tempered glass to avoid breakage from day to day knocks.
The NG10, being USA built, has a few quirks compared with the primarily European built locos used on the narrow gauge. One of these is the fitment of the running boards to the loco. On most engines these are mounted to the frames but on the NG10 they are attached directly to the boiler via large brackets. As the boiler is effectively new identifying the correct mounting points has been quite a task as our set of original drawings for the NG10 does not clearly cover this. However with the help of the many photographs we have of no 61 in service the problem has been overcome as our pictures show.
