FOTR's Capital Park depot recently hosted the cast and crew of the children's SABC3 TV program "Knock Knock". Here an unidentified actor in 'all too clean to be believable overalls' manages to upstage club chairman Nathan, giving the 'thumbs up' sign to our stunning lady photographer. Bow ties on railwaymen are 'so last year'. And this one? Well, the less said about its sartorial elegance, the better! Click here to visit our Forum where you can see more of the great pics taken at this and other events.

"Knock Knock thumbs up by Miemie Wolmerans (2008.06.30).

We at FOTR are fanatical about safety and the tip-top maintenance of our kit. Here Brian Dadford conducts an ND Test (non-destructive test) on a coupler (the knuckles that connect the coaches and locomotives together to form a train) to ensure that it has no cracks or flaws that could cause it to break in service. The white stuff is not paint, but a special fluid sprayed on to help show up any defects.   Picture: Miemie Wolmarans

Of course no photo article would be complete without the obligatory picture of an FOTR train in action! Here FOTR's class 19D, number 2650, blasts its train of contented passengers through Hammanskraal on the great northern mainline in the warm late afternoon sun, returning to Capital Park from Bela Bela (Warmbaths). Picture: Chris Janisch.

Have you taken any photos of our trains and rolling stock ? Or have you taken any photos on one of our trips, perhaps of your family enjoying themselves on one opf our trains?

If so, why not post them here in our Forum - click on this link to see some of the FOTR photos >> FOTR Photo Gallery

 We would love to see them!

Plus, if you have photos of any other rail related material - from electrics, to diesels or stations or signal cabins why not share them with others on the Forum !

Here is another link to browse >> South African Railways

To post photos you have to register on the Forum, but this is easy. Click here to register >> REGISTER ON THE FORUM.

There is only one rule - you must use your FIRST and SURNAME as your USERNAME e.g. JOHN SMITH.

You will also need to resize you photos to 800 by 600 pixels AND 140k or less in size before you post them. 

Looking forward to seeing your photographs!

1. Telkom is having very great difficulty in keeping our sales phone line working. Please call our cellphone number 082-293-4616 (+27-82-293-4616) if you cannot get connected on the sales number.

2. We regret that for the foreseeable future we cannot offer any of our popular train trips up the northern line to Marula Resort and Bela Bela. This is due to a recent Transnet Freight Rail policy decision which disallows steam locomotive haulage on this and all their other 'core' main lines. We are doing everything possible to try to get this decision changed.

Welcome to Friends of the Rail. Thank you for coming here, Enjoy the ride with us!

We are here on the 'web' to tell you all about Friends of the Rail, one of South Africa's Premier Rail Heritage Preservation Clubs, and inform you of the great, nostalgic, fun-filled, interesting vintage steam train trips that we regularly run.

We are proud of what we do, so we also want to tell you lots about our club, what it does, its aims and its objectives. We want to boast about the massive efforts that our members voluntarily put in to restore, preserve and run genuine vintage steam locomotives and trains for the education and delight of the South African public. We are all railway-mad (many of us are also steam-train-mad) so we want to relate heaps more about railways in general and steam trains in particular.

They say that a picture tells a thousand words, so we have provided two areas to share rail photos with you: one on the main website; and another on our Forum site (where you can sign up, join in and share your pics with us).

Go ahead and browse this website using the menus across the top of this page. Those who are in a hurry to get to one of the major areas can click on a button below:

- Details of upcoming vintage steam train trips open to the public

- Interesting information about railway preservation and FOTR in particular

- Our "Forum" pages where you can read about railway related activities and post your own pictures, observations and comments