Please note: All photographs, maps and text in Soul of a Railway are protected by copyright and may not be copied or reproduced in any way for further use without prior permission in writing from the compilers of this series: Les Pivnic, Charlie Lewis, Bruno Martin, Andrew Deacon, Peter Stow, Peter Micenko, Eugene Armer and Sandy Buchanan.

System 5 Part 4: OFS Main Line - Glen to Bloemfontein

Charlie Lewis and Les Pivnic

Strictly speaking this should have been Les’s chapter, but because I was fortunate enough to live, work and photograph around Bloemfontein for eleven years from the beginning of 1968 he has suggested I run with this particular episode.

Between the main line and the freight bye-pass in Estoire (a suburb four miles north of the cbd), nestled the OFS headquarters of the New Works section where I was stationed from early in 1969. My office was alongside the two-mile link between the hump yard and Bloemfontein’s bustling goods depot. At regular intervals haulers with 100 and more wagons would come blasting under the bye-pass flyover on their way to or from the goods yard. Next to the office car park were the two shunting leads at the north end of the hump-yard grid, they were used around the clock for fetching loads that had been sorted into trains and park them in the departure tracks. Barely 50 yards other side of the head shunts and parallel to them was the four-track main line while alongside the eastern wall of my office was the high embankment and flyover for Bloemfontein’s freight bye-pass. As mentioned in the introduction to System 5, there never was a quiet moment – this presented practical problems when trying to hold a telephone conversation.

Before joining New Works I had started in the track maintenance section in the System Manager’s office, in February 1968. Both these jobs offered plenty of scope for recording the astounding activities around town – before, after and sometimes (naughtily) during working hours. For my first six months in BFX (SAR code for Bloemfontein) the city was not quite 100% steam. Brand-new double class 33s came in several times daily off the East London line with block mt grain wagons or to fetch block loads for RSA’s principal grain-exporting harbour. I did not realize it at the time but this was an unprecedented period of growth for SAR freight – within six months these diesel workings had been cut back to Burgersdorp due to shortage of locomotives. For almost four years, until early 1972, BFX reverted to a 100% steam town with more than 300 arrivals and departures every 24 hours.

At first I seemed to be the only one enjoying all this activity but before long I met Eugene Mathey and Org de Bruin who were solidly dedicated to rising early and getting the shots. Just the three of us then, but we lived in heaven. Having set the scene let’s go back to Glen where we stopped Part 3.

1. A typical before-work shot of an up freight (on the left) arriving at Glen crossing a southbound double-header about to tackle the twelve mile 1-in-100 grade to the Modder/Bloemspruit watershed at Estoire.

2. 3239 class 23 on 333-down, stopped for passengers at Glen, gets a little attention from her driver while fireman scratches around in his trommel and the fastidious guard wipes off some dirt he has picked up off the engine.

3. 444-up (on the left), slowing for its scheduled stop, crossing 333-down running late which enabled Roger Perry to photograph the rare sight of two passenger trains crossing the Renosterspruit at Glen in the winter of 1972. Both engines are passenger link 23s, one from BFX and the other from Kroonstad.

4. 333-down with a 15F departing from Glen. In the background is a doubleheader waiting to follow and a northbound freight just about to leave, in January 1971. The farm dam that provided the reflection in Roger Perry's shot is on the extreme right-hand edge of the picture.

5. A recurring theme of the Bloemfontein – Kroonstad line is how busy it was. It was quite easy to get more than one locomotive in the photograph, either as a doubleheader or on another train or both. This was 3133 cl 15F on 211-down, the westbound Orange Express (without nameboard – the significance of it escaped most railwaymen), overtaking a southbound doubleheaded freight in the refuge loop at Glen in August 1971.

6. Because there were no paths for light engines on the Kroonstad line which was operating almost at saturation point, it was normal practice to doublehead power proceeding to or from shops in Bloemfontein. In March 1971, 2130 cl 12A was piloting 2996 cl 15F over the Renosterspruit on a northbound goods. In drag service the 12A/ARs were rated at the same tonnage as a 15F so there would have been no reduction in load.

7. Doubleshotted 15Fs charging the grade out of Glen with 4403-down power-station coal for the Western Cape in March 1968. A freight coming the other way is creeping up to the outer-home and distant. Both boards were on because the station was occupied by two northbound freights waiting for a clear block on Karee bank.

8. In September 1968 Ian Allan brought out a party of British and European railfans for what was probably the first RSA railtour designed purely for the enthusiast. These were the days when SAR realised the importance of good publicity and had not yet adopted their later dismissive and arrogant attitude to the custom. When the party reached Bloemfontein railwaymen really excelled themselves, both at the locoshed and next day when they linesided at Karee Koppie. A wide variety of doubleheaders was laid on specially for the occasion and with perfect weather the show went off exceedingly well. However, their schedule did not allow for dalliance so after the morning’s power parade the party headed off to Kimberley on the Orange Express. For those of us left behind, it was a real pleasure to photograph the rare combinations coming back from Kroonstad, in this case a 19D + wide firebox 16DA combination on a southbound goods leaving Glen. Unfortunately I have lost the engine numbers.

9. Laying a perfect exhaust trail, 3074 + 3043 were essaying the 1-in-100 out of Glen in May 1971 with 2520 tons of 4401-down block coal (in March 1971 down block loads were increased from 2160 tons). The front engine’s stoker motor is going full bore with exhaust leaking down the side of the tender instead of into the ashpan.

10. Three and a half years later this pair of 23s were battling up the same grade, but the mast foundations were in, the poles were distributed alongside the track and the condition of the 23s had been allowed to deteriorate drastically even though there was still more than a year to go before the Kroonstad – Bloemfontein electrification was energised.

11. The same pair of Fs on 4403-down as in picture 7, about 3 miles further up the bank. The engines were in superb mechanical condition, no steam leaks, no knocks or rattles and clearly master of their load, albeit with only 2160 tons.

12. Earlier on the same March day in 1968, and about 150 yards further up the bank (you can see the bridge over the cutting featuring the doubleheader in photo 11), this 15F was unleashing a plume of exhaust the likes of which we shall not see again – "neither in this world nor the next" to quote Joe Collias – with a down block load of export grain destined for East London harbour.

13. Another hardworking 15F in beautiful condition on 211, the westbound Orange Express, coming around the same curve a month earlier, in February 1968. Today it seems impossible that a steam railway could be run 24/7 at this intensity with scarcely a hitch. It was done so matter-of-factly.

14. Kobus Loubser, SAR’s General Manager announced his steam elimination policy in February 1971. The effect on morale and maintenance standards was disastrous as the more ambitious fitters applied en masse to go on diesel courses. Since they were invariably the good ones, there was an instant decline in the condition of engines that continued at an increasing rate until the end of steam.

Failures in traffic on a busy line can be catastrophic. Prior to 1971 they had been almost unheard of on the Kroonstad line, but as steam fitters grew scarcer a natural corollary was that breakdowns by the 15Fs and 23s crept in (nevertheless, and this may be hard to believe, these breakdowns never ever reached the disruptive levels subsequently achieved by the class 5Es and 6Es which replaced them). On this occasion in November 1974, a 23 had snapped its LH connecting rod. While the broken rod was being removed and the valves centered on one side, 4403-down block coal was admitted to the section in order to push the failed train into Van Tonder – the crippled 23 limping along on one cylinder!

15. A 15F on 333-down overnight from Johannesburg in full flight between van Tonder and De Bloem in the winter of 1972.

16. Approaching De Bloem was 4407-down coal in hoppers with one day’s worth of fuel – about 1,500 tons – for the coalstage at Bloemfontein, in December 1971. It is worth mentioning that by the mid sixties, before dieselisation of the Port Elizabeth and East London main lines, almost 15% of the Kroonstad line’s capacity was taken up by the transport of locomotive coal for the OFS and Cape Systems.

17. A northbound (Up) goods approaching De Bloem, where all lines merged into the double-track OFS main line. From the left, the tracks are up and down freight bye-pass, up and down block loads and up and down passenger. The usage was flexible – for instance, block loads leaving from Bloemfontein’s old up block-load yard used the up passenger main.

18. Class 16DA No 870 leaving De Bloem, 8 miles north of Bloemfontein, on 45/523 the 16:50 to Melorane, in March 1968. Hot on its heels is a following freight, about to be deviated onto the bye-pass.

19. 444 meeting a typically heavily-laden 333 a mile south of De Bloem on a frozen morning in June 1971. When the exhaust was being lifted this high you knew the engine was being worked hard. If the wind was blowing from the north most of Bloemfontein could hear 333-down coming into town.

20. There is a lot to study in this picture. It was taken one lunch time from the Greyling Rd bridge in Estoire, just outside my office. Today it is difficult to comprehend where all this business was coming from but let’s start with the train. The 23 and 19D on hauler duty were bringing in a solid load of grain from Van Tonder (thirteen miles north of town) where it had been parked off the previous night due to Bloemfontein being clogged up with traffic. This load would be taken to the down block-load yard for Carriage & Wagon examination (C&W) before being dispatched to the grain export harbour at East London. Just behind the train are two more block loads that have been staged on running lines because of the congestion. In the background are the livestock pens where loads and mts were sorted to and from the abattoir just north of town, together with the class 3R allocated to these duties. Immediately this side of the houses are the two dead-end head shunts for the north end of the hump yard (see pic 30) and other side of the houses is the high embankment of the freight bye-pass. Those residents couldn't have got much sleep!

21. Yet another block load of coal destined for the power stations of the Cape, its 23s faced with another two miles to the Modder/Bloemspruit watershed at Estoire. Fully a third of all southbound traffic on the Kroonstad line was coal, mainly for locomotives and power stations – these were the days before completion of the National Grid. By 1980 when steam traction in the Cape was all but finished and Escom had finally connected its powerlines to Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London, the demand for this traffic had dwindled almost to nothing, leaving the newly electrified line with many fewer trains to handle.

22. Bless the SAR photographer who was inspired to photograph the Orange Express arriving at Bloemfontein just before its semaphores were replaced by efficient but boring colour lights c 1955. As it is, the photo is a model class in semaphore signal recognition.

At the time, Bloemfontein had six platforms (later eight) of which five were on through roads. All of the latter had bi-directional signalling. The express is nearing a scissors crossing which would admit it to No. 2 road, the main passenger platform accessed by the public directly from the station concourse (see next photo). The flat cross shape of the semaphore on the extreme left hand post of the rare five-post bracket is a wrong-road signal, pulled off to indicate to the driver that he is routed into platform 2, normally used by Up trains. At night this signal would display a purple light.

The next post is quite as interesting. On it is mounted a home signal, a distant and a calling-on arm (the diamond-shaped one). The distant and the calling-on arm only applied to trains that were scheduled to go non-stop through platform three – i.e. goods trains (the bye-pass was only completed ten years later, so at this time all freight moved through the platform roads). Like all good intentions, a clear run through didn’t always happen and occasionally freights were brought to a halt within the station. As mentioned in the previous chapter on Bloemfontein, its station was situated on the Bloemspruit, which meant that outbound routes exited on gradients of varying severity. As far as Hamilton the south main line was steep enough to require goods trains to be banked in bad weather, this operation covered by an endorsement in the WTB. If the home signal, the distant and the calling-on arm were all off it meant that a goods train had a clear run through. If the home signal was off but the distant was on it meant that the driver must be prepared to stop at the next signal – which in fact was platform three’s starter. Rain would bring the calling-on arm into play, for its role was to admit the banking engine into a section already occupied by a stationary train in order to push it out of there. At night the calling-on arm displayed a white light.

The other three signals on this five-poster were conventional home signals giving access to platforms four, five and six.

The two-poster on the left is not a splitting signal. It guards the tracks on the left of the up and down mains (in the photo the Orange Express is still on the down main). The left hand track (adjacent to the parcels shed on the left edge of the picture) is the lead to and from the parcels shed shunting yard and icing sidings while the one second from left is the access to the up block-load yard which for some reason had twice as many tracks as the down yard on the other side of the main line and was therefore also used to accommodate down block loads. The arms with S on them were used to allow shunting movements out of these yards along the dead-end track prominent in the left foreground and those with rings allowed access onto the running lines via a crossover, more frequently from the block-load yard. I’m not sure why the parcels shed road also had a ringed signal, unless made-up parcels trains were allowed to depart direct from the parcels shed yard (I don’t recall having seen this happen although I suppose it made sense).

Also on the left is the new twin-aspect colour light signal with route indicator which soon would replace the mechanical signals. The one for the down main line is probably out of sight behind the express and the new starter for the up main would have been behind the photographer who was standing alongside the old mechanical interlocking signalbox, a traditional structure which can be seen on the left in picture 24.

23. On the stroke of eleven, right on the advertised, the westbound Orange Express draws slowly into platform 2 of Bloemfontein’s grand old OVGS station with all the dignity that a 15F could muster. It was these exceedingly dramatic entrances that captured the imagination of a small boy from a very early age. More mundanely, the walking pace was to allow the wheeltapper to do his pinging thing with the carriage tyres. All the posh down trains - the westbound Orange Express and the East London, Port Elizabeth and Mossel Bay expresses - were invariably directed into platform 2. Look how well-patronised the train was, this was early in 1968 and everything is neat and tidy.

24. For the moment we’ll reverse direction and follow the action back northwards as far as Estoire. For a couple of pictures we’ll also wind the clock back to when Les was visiting Bloemfontein in the fifties. During the semaphore signal era, 858 cl 16E, the "Allan G Watson", named after his designer, had just arrived on the eastbound Orange Express and the road has been set for the big Pacific to head off to loco via the aforementioned scissors crossover, visible just to the right of the old mechanically interlocked signal cabin. Note the continental-style twin wire activating system for the points and the signals. All this hardware was soon to be replaced by a very efficient pneumatic system.

25. A few years later, in this grand study by Les a 15F has backed onto the Express and is departing for Kroonstad where the train will reverse direction for the run to Bethlehem and Natal. Note the absence of signal wires. By this time colour-light signals with route indicators had replaced the semaphores and compressed air in pipes buried underground was being used to activate the points.

26. 444-up takes the up main out of Bloemfontein on 3rd January 1972. A class 12R was shunting the parcel shed and the Jo'burg train was in charge of 3263, one of Bloemfontein's passenger-link 23s. In the background is the System Manager’s office with SAA’s leaping springbok neon sign clearly visible on the corner of the roof. Just to the left is the fine old OVGS head office built in 1890 where the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed to end the Boer War in 1902, whereafter it served as the OFS System Manager’s office until the new building was completed in the late 1950s.

27. Christmas to New Year was generally a quieter time for SAR as South African industry went into hibernation for the builder’s holidays. The same train as in photo 26 was accelerating past an amazingly empty up block-load yard. At busy times some of those tracks would be occupied by overflow from the much smaller down yard on the right where a block load of coal can be seen. Adjacent are the parcels shed and icing roads referred to in picture 22. Note the short (4-wheeled) reefer wagon, popular with smaller customers, and the type TZ home-grown dairy wagons which were cooled by using natural evaporation of water trickled down the sides from the roof tanks.

28. Jo'burg here we certainly come! 438, the Port Elizabeth – Johannesburg express overtaking 02662 export manganese from Postmasburg, just getting under way from the up departure yard depicted in the previous photo. A mile ahead 02662 will take the crossover to the main line by which time 438 will have cleared the block section. April 1972.

29. In January 1969 Les photographed this 15F on 212-up, the eastbound Orange Express coming through Estoire, highest point between Glen and Bloemfontein (the express was passing the block signal referred to in the previous photograph). By this time the classic round headlights had mostly been replaced by sealed beams, an unforgivable act of aesthetic vandalism. This was also an interim period for the train itself, a time when it was gradually losing its clerestory roof line, being replaced by the much less stylish elliptical roofed Union Carriage stock.

30. The hump yard, a 24/7 operation, was always busy – even on Christmas day. In System 5, Part I we showed a view of the yard on a clear May afternoon. This is how it looked on a – 10°C winter morning. An enlargement of this photo reveals at least 13 plumes of exhaust from working locomotives, among which can be seen classes S1 (two), 12R, 16DA (two) and the inevitable 15Fs and 23s. The presence of 16DAs - a type utterly unsuited to shunting work - indicates that the picture was made in June 1973 when they had already become redundant as a result of the unilateral abandonment of most of the suburban service the previous December. They were withdrawn soon after.

31. Taken from the same viewpoint as the previous photo on a different morning, looking north instead of south. A northbound doubleheader is passing the cattle pens at Estoire on the up freight departure road, while in the distance a southbound freight has just entered the access track to the down block-load yard. On the right the stock-yard hauler is just drawing in with another consignment of cattle for the abattoirs.