Took a fantastic video this Friday of the Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe at Klein Brak, Great Brak, Outeniqua siding and entering George.
Have to purchase the video editing software first then upload to Youtube.com
Hopefully a local or foreign investor can step up and take over the operation and make it profitable.
I wonder what the price tag is for the OCT, maybe an investor will ask local business to assist too.
Man this is really really sad for this tourism icon to go, Voorbaai with money could becoms the local
workshops for the new business with routes operating up to Lootsberg Pass, Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.
The Sothern Cape offers scenic routes and you can tie this in with a trip with 2 foot gauge from Avontuur to
PE. Hopefully Spoonet do not put a spanner in the negiotation process.
Blowing off steam - The bitter end
SA’s official museum railway will close in June unless an operator with good credentials — and money — can be found, writes Paul Ash.
In the wet winter of 2006, an avalanche of rock, mud and splintered trees thundered into the valley of the Kaaimans River and buried the spectacular George-to-Knysna railway under a mountain of debris.
A few kilometres eastwards, at Swartvlei, flood waters rose up and drowned the railway, washing away embankments and leaving the track hanging in the air.
As a temporary measure, the Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe was diverted to the steeply-graded and far less scenic line between George and Mossel Bay.
Three years later, the railway is still closed, while engineers, consultants, government officials, railwaymen and local tourism operators tussle over its future.
The repair bill for the Knysna line is estimated at about R70-million and Transnet, the railway’s owner, has had enough.
This is the second flood in a decade to close the line. In 2005, floods in the cutting above Victoria Bay carried off whole chunks of track. Trains were stopped for months while engineers repaired the track and attempted to redirect the river to prevent future floods.
The things that make the railway so attractive — the lakes it flirts with on its 67km journey, the high bridges over rivers and lagoons, and its steam locomotives — have proven to be its undoing. It was an expensive railway to operate, bleeding Transnet of around R850000 a month, according to Garth Strachan, former MEC for finance, economic development and tourism in the Western Cape.
There are many cuttings and embankments, and seven major bridges. The steam locomotives are labour-intensive machines with voracious appetites for coal, oil and water — a load of good-quality coal for a single trip to Knysna costs about R3000.
Transnet has vowed to shed all its “non-core†businesses — such as heritage operations and passenger trains — to focus on freight. Earlier this year, with the railway’s future still hanging in the air like the ruined track over Swartvlei, it announced that the steam-hauled tourist train would cease running at the end of April. Thirty jobs, mostly fitters and locomotive crew based at the main shed and workshops at Voorbaai, would be lost.
Transnet’s sour press release lit a rocket under Western Cape tourism officials and local operators, who reacted with alacrity and applied pressure to keep the train going. Transnet agreed to keep the steam train running until the end of June, in the hope that local government and tourism people could come up with a viable plan to save it.
In early April, Strachan said the Western Cape government had looked at various strategies to save the train and empower local communities at the same time.
“The Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe is a tourist icon in the province and we would like to save it,†Strachan said.
The Western Cape government had appointed a consultant to investigate whether the line to Knysna could be repaired, how much it would cost and whether there was a viable business case for the railway. The report has still not been made public and, now that the national elections have swept the DA to power in the Western Cape, the Knysna line and the future of the Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe has become someone else’s headache.
Tourism operators and rail fans are hoping that Helen Zille’s men will succeed where the previous lot of officials failed — to restore services to Knysna.
The new man in Strachan’s hot seat is Alan Winde, who promises that the new government will do everything it can to save the tourist train: “I will exhaust every avenue available to me to ensure that the Outeniqua Choo Tjoe will stay in operation as it is a special feature of the Garden Route.â€
But reopening the line is only part of the struggle. Tourist railways by their very nature are often marginal businesses with scant cash reserves.
Worldwide, even successful, heavily-patronised tourist railways depend largely on unpaid volunteers — engine drivers and firemen, cleaners, track-workers, ticket-sellers, conductors and people to staff platform tearooms and restaurants.
Track and locomotive maintenance is expensive, and, given the scale of the civil engineering works on the Knysna line, it is unlikely the railway will be viable without a subsidy. Looking after the bridges alone will require very deep pockets, and the floods that have wiped the line out twice in a decade are surely going to happen again.
It is, however, an opportunity to do things differently. Even since the railway became Transnet’s museum line in 1991, it was run like a government department instead of a business. The tourist train has never run on Sundays — even in peak holiday season — and passengers were often treated as little more than self-loading cargo.
Making a go of the railway will mean hiring people who understand the tourism business to run and market the train, and reverse years of neglect and erratic marketing.
One solution being considered is a truncated operation between Wilderness and Knysna, which would allow for a more intensive service. A shorter route would also be more attractive to people looking for a short day out.
Either way, the railway is a valuable tourist attraction. In the right hands, it could be a boost to not only established tour operators, but also to the communities that live alongside the tracks.