Friends of the Rail Forum

From: Peter Rogers
Date: Mon, May 2, 2011 at 10:29 AM
Subject: Royal Wedding Fever - Nah, not for me!

While most of the world were glued to their TVs watching the royal couple taking their nuptials, I was out in the country playing trains.

There was a major derailment at Muldersvlei on Easter Friday (27 container flats off, some containers totally destroyed) which closed the mainline for 3 days. Passenger trains terminated at Worcester and passengers were bussed to Cape Town. A single track was opened on Monday and traffic started to move. I was hoping to pick up some of the trains clearing the backlog.

First went to Muldersvlei to look at the damage. Wagons all over the countryside. Apparently the cause was a mechanical failure on the train (the locos did not come off). Work on the track and overhead was continuing. After looking around for a while from the other side of the safety tape, but being asked not to take any photos, I left to find some running trains.

Travelled up the line with red signals at all stations in both directions. Not promising... After deciding that if I saw nothing by Hermon, I would shoot over to the Malmesbury line and photograph whatever was moving there. At Hermon however I was greeted by the sight of a fearsome pall of smoke over the station yard - two 33s from Worcester were shunting a long string of cement empties that they had just bought off the Riebeeck West branch. After setting out most of the load in sidings for Bellville, they departed for Worcester with 4 DZs of cement. They crossed a southbound freight at Hermon and I snapped them as the came through Tulbagh Kloof.

Afterwards I went and had a look at Tulbagh Road station - totally vandalised of course. While I was there, the signal winked to green and the CT- JHB Shosh Meyl came through. Both the Economy and Tourist classes are combined into one train (18 vehicles) - this makes total economic sense and is how the service should have been run in the first place instead of having two seperate services.

I followed the train through to Breerivier where the opposing pax was crossed - and then back towards the Kloof. There a so many trucks on the road (R44) (it being the preferred alternative to the north as it avoids toll roads) that it was impossible to follow the train. This includes a large number of grain carrier trucks - this is a commodity that should never have been allowed to be lost by rail !! I still got a good shot of the train passing through Artois and another at Hermon

Then I went back to other side of Wolseley and gardened a spot at one of the Breede River bridges in preparation for the JHB - C.T. Premier Classe. Everything looked good, but a solitary pesky cloud killed the light as the train appeared. More trucks held me up on the road and I just a managed a grab shot at Artois, but this time made it to the Kloof. It's interesting to see that a second car carrier wagon is being used on the train - this is a SCL commercial type and was not in Shosh Meyl colours

Tried a few more shots southbound, but the same pesky clouds conspired to ruin both chosen spots. Thereafter enquiries at Wellington cabin (with brilliant light) but nothing was due for a while so I headed for home.

Pete