NGG13 49 on a demonstration freight on a winter’s morning. Picture by Dave Richardson
Visitors to Sandstone will know that NGG13 49 and NG 15 17 have been stalwarts of the Sandstone 2ft narrow gauge railway since 2004. The locomotives were moved from Umlaas Road and Humewood Road respectively by (then) Spoornet for safe keeping and eventual preservation during the 1980’s.
O&K 11112 is a favourite with our younger visitors on Seb’s Heart of Africa Railway. Picture by Sandstone.
We tend to think that 1925 was not that long ago but it is now 100 years ago and two of our steam locomotives have just celebrated their 100th birthday!
On the 2ft gauge system we have O&K 0-4-0WT number 11112, which was rescued from Fazenda Tentativa Sugar in Angola where it was their number 5. It last saw service in Angola in 1969 and was returned to working order by Lukas Nel and his team at Bloemfontein in 2016.
Since its inception in 1999 the Sandstone Steam Railway has provided plenty of copy for our web site but its full story has never been told.
NGG13 49 stands at Umlaas Road in 1985
NGG13 number 49, built by Hanomag in 1928, has led a chequered career before arriving at its current home at the Sandstone Steam Railway. Originally allocated to the Port Shepstone to Harding line, it spent some time in South West Africa (Namibia today) on the Otavi Railway as part of an experiment to test Garratt locos there.
Although the use of steam powered machinery is limited worldwide, there is still a great deal of use of such machinery, either mobile or static, in the Heritage arena.
We have made a significant change to one of our favourite attractions at Sandstone!
Seb's Children's Railway, which was originally named after one of the grandsons of a Sandstone Director, underwent a major change recently and was enclosed in a game camp which
has changed the nature of the line.
Marc-Henri Andre, from Switzerland, has been a frequent visitor to Sandstone over the years, particularly to our Stars of Sandstone events. As well as being an accomplished photographer, he is also a talented artist and has produced many sketches of Sandstone scenes and our locomotives. He also produced a number of bespoke calendars for us.
Sandstone’s acquisition of the two Royal Train coaches of 1947 came to the attention of one of our readers, Dr Brian Austin, who is a member of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers.
We recently received two articles from Stewart Currie at the RSSA Reef Branch, both from Allan Jorgensen, published many years ago in South African Transport magazine. “7 Light Rails”, from September 1978, has a piece on the Lawley locomotives of Buzi Sugar, Mozambique, two of which survived in the Peter Rampton collection in the UK.
We recently ran a story about the AY Hoppers we sold to the Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington Railway (WW&F) and the Edaville Railway in Maine, USA. The units were delivered directly to the WW&F which is some distance from the Edaville Railway. Following on from our previous post (https://www.sandstone-estates.com/index.php/railway-heritage-58/2ft-narrow-gauge/3769-the-usa-rolling-stock-arrives) we received a mail from the Chairman of the WW&F, David Buczkowski, detailing the move of the wagons destined for the Edaville Railway.
David takes up the story:
We recently discovered two coaches from the 1947 Royal Train of South Africa near Ladybrand.
“Voie Libre” is a French magazine , produced in both French and English editions, for small gauge railway modellers. It is generally accepted as one of the finest magazines in the world on the subject of railway modelling. The title, “Voie Libre”, literally translated, means “Clear Path”
OK 11112 Ermyntrude
After a successful gauging test two more locos have been passed to run on Sandstone’s shorter system, Seb’s Railway. These are O&K 0-6-0WT 11112 of 1925, “Ermyntrude” and O&K 0-6-0WT 12140 of 1930, “Anna”. These locomotives along with other locomotives were acquired from Fazenda Tentativa Sugar Estate in Caxito, Angola.
We thought you would enjoy this picture of the smallest locomotive in the Sandstone fleet and the largest. The 1919 built 0-4-0ST “Little Bess” and the 1968 built (and modified in 1990) NGG16A Garratt locomotive number 155. Truly the largest and smallest!
