System 6, Part 22: Umlaas Road – Mid Illovo Railway

compiled by Bruno Martin, Charles Parry and Ashley Peter ©


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 and Bruno Martin.

DEDICATION

To the loving memory of John Gilberthorpe.

"In early 1976, as a passed fireman at Greyville, I observed that a notice had been posted asking for a driver to relieve on that line for some time, but there were obviously no takers. The months went by, and still, the notice had remained. So, somewhat tongue in cheek, I went to the loco foreman, 'Snowy' O'Neill, one day and asked if they would consider a passed fireman to drive there. To my surprise, he seemed very pleased and immediately picked up the telephone to call his counterpart at Masons Hill, the famous Mr van der Merwe, who was in charge of that depot in its heyday of Garratt working, and under whom Umlaas Road also fell. I was accepted joyfully, to my great surprise. If only I had known that as soon as the notice had appeared! My two months on that line have been amongst my happiest on the SAR footplate."


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND THANKS


The request for photographs taken on the Natal Two-Foot Gauge Lines generated a selection of over 700 images from our contributors. As a result, it was decided to split the chapter into seven parts following on from the numerical sequence of System 6 Natal:

Part 21. Estcourt–Weenen Railway.

Part 22. Umlaas Road–Mid Illovo Railway.

Part 23. Ixopo–Donnybrook (Stuartstown Railway) and the Union Bridge (Ixopo)–Madonela Branch.

Part 24. Port Shepstone–Harding Railway (Alfred County Railway).

Part 25. Port Shepstone and Alfred County Railway (ACR).

Part 26. Natal Narrow-Gauge Motive Power.

Part 27. The Natal Narrow Gauge Preservation Group.

A special thank you is extended to Leith Paxton, who generously provided us with his collection of images and placed all his information on the narrow-gauge railways at our disposal.

Richard Niven deserves a special mention for providing scans of pages from the late John Gilberthorpe's priceless diaries where the daily working over a two-month period on the line was meticulously recorded.

The following photographers and colleagues contributed photographs to this chapter:

Allen Duff; Allen Jorgensen via Dick Manton; Brian Couzens via Ashley Peter (RSSA Natal Branch); Bruno Martin; Dick Manton; Eugene Armer; Garratt & Robert Bucher (R L Bucher Collection); Glen Mills; John Gilberthorpe via Richard Niven; John Middleton; Leith Paxton; Les Pivnic; Roger Griffiths; THL via Yolanda Meyer.

Thanks, as always, are due to Andrew Deacon for formatting the chapter and Charlie Lewis for posting it.

Last but not least, thanks to my wife, Sarah, for typing the many pages of text for John Gilberthorpe's "Memories of the Umlaas Road-Mid Illovo Line".