Port Elizabeth, 1974

From Cape Town to Port Elizabeth takes about 24 hours' sailing along the Cape Province coast, an endless panorama of mountains moving past on the Northern horizon whilst the ship labours against the great Agulhas current flowing Southwest at a majestic 4 knots.

As opposed to Cape Town, here shunting wasn't the exclusive domain of S2 class 0-8-0s. There were at least two 12R class locos at work here, one of them no. 1506, and an unidentified one. At the time I had no knowledge whatsoever of SAR locomotive classes. Later I had to piece together what I had seen laboriously from the photos using the standard work on SAR locomotives, 'Steam Locomotives of the SAR' by D.F.Holland. Our time at Port Elizabeth regrettably was short, but late one afternoon I set out to photograph what I could in the shunting yard. One or two trains came in and I remember distinctly one very beautifully maintained 4-8-2 which looked like having a Belpaire firebox. This may have been an unrebuilt loco with a combustion chamber boiler. I was too late to photograph this loco, nor do I have its number. I have however two (inconsistent) leads. O.S.Nock in his book 'Railways of Southern Africa' mentions an unrebuilt 15A (no.1845) in use at Port Elizabeth in 1971. David Guelpa of South Africa however suggests 12A class no. 1521 which was stationed at P.E. at the time.

In the brief period of daylight remaining that winter afternoon I took many photos, making maximum use of the clear light of the setting sun glinting off the motion of shunting locomotives. The S2s with their eternal wheelslip were familiar from Cape Town, but the 12R, a small-wheeled 4-8-2 tender loco, was something quite different with its plate frames and low-slung footplate. As the sun set, a 19D came in with another goods train. The loco ran round and disappeared into the direction of the main station. The 12R fussed around some more and then was parked at the water tanks. When dusk descended I wandered round, taking several atmospheric shots represented in this page.

My visit to Port Elizabeth and East London in 1976

This time at Port Elizabeth I also shot some film of a a cowcatcher-less class 12R 4-8-2, possibly the same no. 1506 of last time. The old loco was busy under the overbridge leading to the narrow gauge exchange yard, whistling to warn anyone at work beyond the overbridge which blocked the driver's sight. There was an S2 shunting in the reception sidings near the sea wall which was driven by a character who must have favoured sports cars. Time and again he came barreling past at great speed, and I had great fun whilst he was breaking up a train, dispatching one vehicle after another down the sidings. He must have been in a hurry as he was stressing the shunter, furiously using the whistle. It is as well that I didn't quite understand the shunter's reply in angry Afrikaans...

At East London, railway-wise we had an interesting time, with great amounts of Zambian copper arriving by rail. This was shunted alongside our berth on the East side of the Buffalo River by an unidentified large-boilered 4-8-2, which was rather roughly handled to manage the heavy loads involved. My photos of East London shed show a large complement of 14CRs, which suggests this may have been another 14CR.

One afternoon we came on deck from our lunch when the loco appeared alongside. Without thinking, in unison we lined the rail and started waving our arms in the same manner as the shunters used to: carry on, carry on… The driver noticed us, grinned and pulled the regulator wide open, spinning the loco's wheels violently. This sent a pillar of smoke to the unsuspecting crane driver 30ft above the loco, who hung half-suffocated out of his cubicle and hurled a string of curses at the driver in shrill Afrikaans. It almost prompted a strike for which the management didn't thank us…

Late that evening in November 1976 I went ashore with my cassette recorder and made the best sound recordings ever, with the big loco being thrashed up and down the narrow yard along the quay, collecting the empty gondolas that had been used to bring out the copper to our ship. During a pause in operations, in the still night air, in the distance one could distinctly hear a train labouring up the steep incline from the river yard towards East London main station. It was very humid and the rails offered little adhesion which resulted in endless slipping as a string of empties was removed down the river bank. Finally, the remaining empties had been marshalled into another long train which then was drawn away from the quay towards the connecting line.

Next morning I heard that during the night our shunting engine had been put into the ballast, stalling all cargo work for hours...

I had the next afternoon off and went in search of more locomotives. Not very far away was the East London running shed, where I asked permission to photograph the engines. From one thing came another, and soon I boarded the shed pilot, 14CR no. 2028, from the footplate of which I filmed some of the shunting inside the shed area. The driver remarked that unfortunately I had just missed the daily 'storming' of the trestle leading to the loco coal loader. Regrettably I was not able to see this the next day as we were due to sail then. When the loco's duties moving about her 'cold' sisters had finished, her boiler was blown down and her fire cleaned. Then it was time for me to return to the ship.

A regular spectacle at East London was the train towards an industrial estate on the opposite side of the Buffalo River. This involved climbing a steep incline from the river up to the level of the surrounding terrain. Usually this was announced by a smoke screen over the low hills near the river mouth, then the (often double-headed) train appeared, racing uphill, furiously whistling for a level crossing halfway and finally disappearing around a curve over the skyline far to the right.

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