LANGEENHEID Traditional Cache

This cache forms part of the SAR stations and sidings series on the West Coast area.

Please bring your own pen

The first track for steam-powered locomotives was a line of about 3.2 kilometres (2 mi) by the Natal Railway Company, linking the town of Durban with Harbour Point, opened on 26 June 1860. Cape Town had already started building a 72-kilometre (45 mi) line, track gauge 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in), linking Cape Town to Wellington in 1859 but was hampered by delays and could only open the first section of the line to the Eerste River on 13 February 1862. However Cape railway construction began a massive expansion, after the formation in 1872 of the Cape Government Railways. In the north, in the independent South African Republic, railway construction was done by the Netherlands-South African Railway Company (NZASM), which constructed two major lines: one from Pretoria to Lorenzo Marques in Portuguese East Africa Colony, and a shorter line connecting Pretoria to Johannesburg. A national "link-up" was established in 1898, creating a national transport network. This national network was largely completed by 1910.[1] Though railway lines were also being extended outside of South Africa, as far north as Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia), the vision of Cecil John Rhodes, to have a rail system that would run from the "Cape to Cairo", would never materialise. Upon the merger of four provinces to establish the modern state of South Africa in 1910, the railway lines across the country were also merged. South African Railways and Harbours (SAR & H) was the government agency responsible for, amongst other things, the country's rail system. Electrification of the railways began in the 1920s with the building of the Colenso Power Station for the Glencoe to Pietermaritzburg route and the introduction of the South African Class 1E. During the 1980s, the transport industry was reorganised. Instead of being a direct government agency, it was modelled along business lines into a government-owned corporation