Sightings

Hi all.

Even less this week train wise - next week maybe nothing...

We missed a Bultfontein bound load of mielies behind a 34 class near Protespan. Near Drie Ruiters we got a south bound train of mielies, petrol and Lime behind orange E 1169, greetings from the crew. At Leeudoringstad we got the back of a very long south bound ore train, the locomotives long gone all ready. 34 043 was shunting at Hennenman ready to take a load of mielies to Kroonstad.

Thank goodness for the ore haulages on the mines - Sheltam, RRL and Harmony - otherwise almost no trains.

We visited the Bloemfontein area again and have one correction to make. We missed Ferreira last week due to missing kilometer posts. This week we found the station. As you can guess, only a name board remains, overgrown goods platform and remains of buildings. Transnet were busy uplifting all the rails in the yard area. An 1898 piece of rail is used in the old goods platform.

Sleepdam was visited very quickly as the entire place is a latrine. Only a name remains. Vagrants have moved into the old re-lay rooms. Hard to believe that this line once had state of the art signaling and before that plenty of neatly kept stations...

Haldon, also only a name and remains of the passenger shelters / waiting rooms.

Estoire has a huge amount of scrap metal lying on the platforms, TFR scrapped wagons.

Lynchfield looks the same, only a name and ruins of the once neatly kept station. On the way to Lynchfield we passed plenty of the former suburban stations, only overgrown platforms remain.

All the lines around Bloemfontein have plenty of small stations / halts. Unfortunately due to missing names and Kilometer posts it's difficult to identify these. Things look very different from a moving train than on the ground. Also some places have become dangerous to visit due to squatters.

Do some of the nearer list members want to join us on a Recce of all these stations some time and then a braai at Kloofeind or somewhere along the Kimberley line?

Greetings.

J & J.