South african two-foot -gauge ; featuring the last garratts

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INTRODUCTION
This album concems the five two-foot gauge railways operated by South African Railways (SAR) in Natal and Eastem Cape Province to record their latter day operations until closure, and in some cases, present day limited working or partial preservation. It is also to commemorate the completion of the Welsh Highiand Railway from Caemarvon to Porthmadog and that its mainstay locomotives are Garratts which had previously worked in South Africa. Very appropriately, it is also the centenary year in which the first Garratt type locomotive was built, in 1909, by Beyer Peacock of Manchester for the Tasmanian Government Railway.
It is not the intention to delve into the history of the five railways or locomotive details, but simply to portray some of the locations and traffic these railways operated. Each of the five lines, starting in the north and coming south down into the Eastem Cape, is briefly described. For much of their existence, the Natal lines were entirely Garratt worked (except in later years when the Alfred County Railway owned some NG15 2-8-2s and hired in two class 91 diesels), whereas the long two-foot gauge line in the Eastem Cape, also partially Garratt worked, used conventional locomotives and additionally, within the time span of this album, rigid framed class NG 15 2-8-2s. These were cascaded down from South West Africa in1960, following the dieselisation of the railway in that and region. The Avontuur railway also became a user of class 91 diesels in 1973-
With this in mind readers can enjoy the sight and sound of these attractive Garratts and NG15s now in the United Kingdom and, in reduced circumstances, on part of two of the railways in their native land described here; also on the new private railway at Sandstone, near Ficksberg in the Orange Free State.

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