The Old Railway Engines
Sandy Grant | Wednesday March 8, 2017 16:32
Yet in the past, the old coal-fired Garrets were familiar to everyone living in the country’s eastern strip as indeed were the mixed and mail trains. In 2009, however, the old passenger service was discontinued but brought back in 2016 to provide for the minority elitist passenger rather than, as in the past, the majority.
The result has been that the railway, which was a part of everyone’s life, is now part of no ones, or at least only of a privileged few. In addition, the new passenger train travels at night so that only few of us ever see it either close up or from a distance.
The freight train, invariably of a quite astonishing length is a different matter, however, because these can be regularly seen by everybody but usually at a distance. We no longer go to the old railway stations so we don’t see them there. Our best chance is to catch them at level crossings.
Personally, I marvel at the astonishing power of these diesel engines which have no problem moving 40 or so heavily loaded trucks from a standing start.
They just give a poop and start moving. For anyone watching this happening, there has to be awe, and a degree of respect. But the missing element is the excitement which came whenever the old engines began to move.
Then there was this extraordinary combination of sight and sound with the engine noisily gathering way, the staccato burst of sound with smoke erupting into the sky and those pistons moving slowly then faster and faster.
There has to be a feeling amongst many of the oldies and not so old oldies that the young have sadly missed out on one of the wonders of the world. Perhaps that this is to over-state matters. But children all over the world, including myself, of course were fascinated by the combination of power and elegance and spent hours collecting their engine numbers as if they were postcards.
The experts, not least the young, knew everything about the different types of engine, their capability and role. The Garret engines were different. Instead of being elegant, they were of a monstrous size. Not having grow up here as a child, I could not have been aware of the different engine types that were also to be seen along this 888 kilometre stretch of line. Some years ago however, we got to Livingstone and visited what was proclaimed to be its railway museum.
It proved to be not a museum but a graveyard – of what seemed like hundreds of engine carcasses dating back, I suppose, to the year dot. These are all artefacts, like any other of the more recognisable and familiar artefacts.
In South Africa it seems that there is a real awareness of the importance of its railway heritage. But what support is coming from, say UNESCO and the international community to help Livingstone cope even a little better with its rich but very cumbersome heritage?