Cape Town Station

[Stefan Andrzejewski]

Friends of mine arrived on the Premier Classe yesterday afternoon.The train was 70 minutes late so only arrived at 17h25. In the middle of peak hour. They waited outside Cape Town for ten minutes as Set X was on platform 24 departing at 17h20. The train on the right in the first photo is the Malmesbury Express. The Suburban set must be in for a service or damage repair. I apologise that these photos are so dark. It was very dark on the station as it was overcast and the station poorly lit.

[Carl van der Linde]

I've attached a few of the construction (reduced a bit to conserve Friends of the rail bandwidth) being undertaken at present on Cape Town station. They were taken over the last 2 Saturdays, I was visiting in the Southern suburbs from the far Northern suburbs and I often take the train to catch up on some reading. Incidentally one can feel the difference between the main line and the Southern suburbs line when reading

[Stefan Andrzejewski]

Carl thanx for the memory. I remember those old boards. Traveling the Southern Suburbs line often I had that board memorised. My favourite in the evening was the 17h00 from platform 8 . Salt River, Mowbray, Claremont , Wynberg Plumstead then all to Fish Hoek. It would come flying out of the platform. There were no diamond crossings on that platform. 17 to 20 minutes tops to Plumstead. Beat that in a car in peak hour. The train before was 16h52 to Claremont so would never get in our way. I don't think that they have any express trains on that line now. I here that they want to stop all trains past Retreat on Saturday on Sunday afternoons.

[Aidan McCarthy]

Hi Carl,

I also remember those boards from when I was a kid and we used to think nothing of travelling to Cape Town from Fish Hoek for a day in Cape Town during the school holidays. Always seemed to get there just in time for a train so decision was to run for the train and arrive at the platform to see the end of the train disappearing. The strange thing was that there did not seem to be any indication on the platforms as to the timetable and once you where on the platform you could not go back onto the main concourse. So you would have to find a conductor and ask when the next train was to the southern suburbs. Always got a look that said stupid kids why didn't you look a the board.

Cheers

Aidan

[Stefan Andrzejewski]

Nice foto pic site Aiden