Simon’s Town Station – the End of the Line
The cache, a small screw-capped, camo-taped sample tube is hidden along Long Beach adjacent to the railway as it exits the station.
To Reach the Cache Location: park at the Long Beach car park @ or near S 34 11.225 E 18 25.550 or in a parking bay on Main Road @ or near S 34 11.277 E 18 25.525 and make your way (down to, and) along the beach to the cache location.
***Please ensure the cache is correctly replaced, using the concealment materials available - thanks!***
Simon’s Town station – the most southern station on the continent - is the terminus of the Metrorail Southern Line, a commuter rail line connecting Cape Town station with the Southern Suburbs and the towns on the west coast of False Bay.
Up to Fish Hoek the line is twin track. From Fish Hoek into Simon's Town is single-track, but the station itself has three tracks - one served by a side platform next to the station building and the other two by an island platform connected by a pedestrian subway.
No trains ran on the 6.3 km final section of the Cape Town suburban line between Fish Hoek and Simon's Town from November 2009 until February 2011, due to unusually high tides that piled heaps of sand on the line and caused serious damage beyond Glencairn, where structure beneath the track was undermined (see here for a blog on this).
Since then, the line has suffered increasingly frequent and often prolonged closures due to the recurring problem of huge quantities of sand blown across Long Beach, over the station wall and on to the tracks by the prevailing often strong south-easterly winds (aka ‘The Cape Doctor’).
History of the Line
The Wynberg Railway Company was established in 1861 to build a railway line from Salt River Junction to Wynberg, which opened on 19 December 1864. In 1876 it was taken over by the Cape Government Railways, and the line, originally been built to the standard gauge, was rebuilt to Cape gauge.
The extension to Muizenberg opened on 15 December 1882, and a further extension to Kalk Bay on 5 May 1883. The final extension, to the naval base at Simon's Town, opened on 1 December 1890. The line was electrified with overhead catenary in 1928.
The line runs on Cape gauge 3ft 6in (1,067 mm) track, and is electrified with 3,000V DC overhead catenary. Service on the line is provided by Electric Multiple Units of Class 5M2A and Class 10M5. These are made up in an 8-car configuration, shorter than on the other Metrorail routes in Cape Town, because many of the platforms on the Southern Line are too short to handle longer trains.
In 2007, Cape Town Tourism, the City of Cape Town, and Metrorail collaborated to promote the Southern Line as a tourist route, focusing on tourist attractions near Cape Town, Observatory, Newlands, Muizenberg, Kalk Bay and Simon's Town stations. This included a ‘hop-on, hop-off’ ticket which allowed unlimited travel on the line during off-peak hours.
The extension of the railway line from Kalk Bay to Simon's Town (some six miles) was completed in 1890 and the official opening of the line and new station took place on 1 Dec 1890 by Premier Cecil J Rhodes. There has been little change to the main building over the years. There was also a turntable and a cattle-holding pen.
In 1901 several trains a day transported troops and guns and brought several thousand Boer War prisoners to Bellevue camp. The Station played an important role in both World Wars, serving the Naval Base. The only officially enlisted Navy dog - Great Dane ‘Just Nuisance’ - travelled regularly on the line during WW2. The 100th Anniversary of the station was celebrated on 1 Dec 1990. To the south of the station the curved retaining wall of the turntable can still be seen, it is believed that the turntable itself was transferred in 1962 to Loerie on the Apple Express Line in the Langkloof.
See here for a fascinating photo and video blog on the steam trains which periodically travel the route on rail special days to Simon’s Town – when it is open!
See here (p2-3) for early Cape railway history.
Videos: see here and here (train from Cape Town to Simon’s Town with stop-offs in Muizenberg & Kalk Bay), here (real time train front view of Fish Hoek to Simon’s Town.
