Friends of the Rail Forum

Three more S2 0-8-0's shunting at Cape Town 3rd January 1970.

S2 3762


S2 3763


S2 3768


Ian

Interesting that a shunting loco has such a big tender. One would have thought it could be built with a small tender as presumably it would never be far from a water column. Were these the original tenders or were they added later? Or did the heavy tender have some other function, eg to assist with braking if they were shunting wagons without the vacuum coupled through?

John from what I can remember the S2's have always looked like that. I always begged my father on a Sunday afternoon to drive into the docks, not to see the ships but to see the Steam Loco's. Driving down Table Bay Boulevard my Easgle eyes were always looking for the signs of steam. In those days I did not know one from the other but it was a steam loco. When the Class 36's arrived it did not just seem the same.

My question got answered by some of the old hands at Capital Park today. The tender is original. It's about the same size as a Class 24 tender, but it has the cut-away sides to allow good rear vision for the crew. I'm told that they were built to shunt "down at the docks" (which docks?) where there were few water columns, and also that they were used very intensively and had no time to waste taking water.

There were never any water columns in the docks. The nearest was Paarden Eiland or Woodstock which was across Table Bay Boulevard

If you look at the photo of 3763, it looks suspiciously like an overhead water pipe at the dock shunter servicing area.

Ian

Sorry you are right . I was thinking about the traditional water tank tower.

Here's a couple of harbour shunt pics from July 1981, plus a grab shot from 1978. These are from slides that weren't in great shape; I had to photoshop them, still not great. Nice memories though.

They were horrible locomotives to fire. The boiler was small, and you were forever putting fire ion, then the boiler pressure rises, put on the injectors then the pressure falls. You had to fire them with the blower on . They had a speed restriction plate fitted on the boiler above the flame plate saying maximum speed 25kph.
Remember they are 0-8-0.
Pretoria had a regular one for the Blue Train shunt and it was painted blue. Probably the first ever Blue S2.

I did not know that they were still working in 1981. I thought that the Class 36's had taken over by then. Good to see. Nathan apperantly they could go backwards faster because of the lack of leading wheels.

S2s were one of three SAR steam classes to have tenders longer than the loco. I'll leave you to work which the other two were.

Holland suggests that after Krupp won the contract to build them they found it couldn't be done within the specified weight, and thus there had too be a drastic rethink and a reduction in boiler size. Whatever happened I believe the boilers that were fitted are a lengthened version of the NG/G16 boiler.

I don't remember too many problems with them at PE, though as Nathan says the smallness of the boiler did mean there was very little storage capacity and therefore you had to be on the ball. It is certainly true that they were rough riders at speed, as I found on a light engine trip back from Uitenhage shops to Sydenham.

Martin

I seem to remember a photo in one of Dusty's books of a line of S2s all coupled together on their way to Paarden Island shed for servicing from the docks.

Aidan

Aidan , they used to line up like that in the docks as well. You could see about ten or 15 of them all sizzling away in front of the then newly built customs house.

Here's two pics of a group of S-1's heading en-masse into the harbour - March 1979.

Anyone know why they did not design them with leading and trailing wheels