Rail transport in South Africa

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South Africa's rail network (gray lines: not in service)

The rail transport in South Africa plays an important role in the development of South Africa . Today, freight traffic is particularly important. The Ministry of Public Enterprises and the Department of Transport have state responsibility for rail transport.

The route network

In 2008, the route network was around 20,192 kilometers long. Of these, 19,756 kilometers were in Cape Gauge (1067 mm track width). South Africa now has the second longest narrow-gauge network in the world after Japan . In 2008 there were also 122 kilometers with a track width of 750 and 314 with a track of 610 millimeters. Two lines for the Gautrain in the Johannesburg and Pretoria area were built in standard gauge around 2010 . Around three fifths of the routes are not electrified and are used by diesel locomotives. With 3 kV equal as well as 25 or 50 kV AC voltage and overhead line operated. In the past, there were tram networks in several major cities .

Border crossings in rail transport

The South African rail network closes

There is also a line operated by Transnet Freight Rail to Maseru in Lesotho . The route length in Lesotho is 1.6 kilometers.

The rail network of Transnet Freight Rail is connected by the railways of the neighboring states with Zambia Railways , TAZARA , the southern network of Société Nationale des Chemins de fer du Congo , the rail network in Malawi , the Benguela Railway and Caminhos de Ferro de Moçambique -Zentral and - North.

Operator and development of the sector

Most of the freight transport is the responsibility of the state-owned company Transnet , which has its Transnet Freight Rail division for this purpose . This also includes the public route network. The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) has been responsible for long-distance passenger transport since 2009 after Transnet ceded this area for economic reasons. It also operates the Metrorail networks for local transport in metropolitan areas , for which Transnet provides extensive technical services.

Since 2009 there has been an annual meeting of institutions from the transport sector, which is organized under the name Railways & Harbors in the form of an exhibition and a conference. It serves the development of rail traffic and the exchange of the associated economic interests.

passenger traffic

Train of the Metrorail Cape Town in Kalk Bay station

The main share of rail-based passenger traffic today extends to local traffic in the metropolitan areas. Suburban trains run under the name Metrorail in the regions of Johannesburg, Pretoria , Cape Town , Durban , Port Elizabeth and East London .

There are also long-distance trains with sometimes long routes. Most long-distance trains run under the name Shosholoza Meyl ( Shosholoza is a folk song about workers on the train journey; Meyl means something like "long-distance train"). They connect the major centers of the country and run up to once a day. The Shosholoza Meyl trains operate as "Premier Class", "Tourist / Sitter" or "Economy" trains. The latter are primarily used for non-tourist passenger traffic.

Route map of the Shosholoza Meyl trains (as of 2012)
Shosholoza Meyl train

From Johannesburg Cape Town, Durban, Bloemfontein , Port Elizabeth , East London and Mafikeng can be reached. In addition, there were trains to Komatipoort at least until 2012 and trains on the Alicedale - Grahamstown route until 2008 . The travel speed of long-distance trains is relatively low. A Shosholoza Meyl train, for example, takes around 27 hours to cover the 1,500-kilometer route between Johannesburg and Cape Town, which means it reaches an average of around 56 km / h.

There are also luxury trains designed exclusively for tourists, the Blue Train and the Pride of Africa . The longest route of the Pride of Africa, which is considered to be the most luxurious train in the world, is Cape Town - Dar es Salaam . On numerous routes there are occasional or regular tourist trips with historical locomotives. The Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe , which last operated on the George-Mossel Bay railway line , was known.

Passenger trains no longer run on numerous routes that used to be regularly operated. Today no neighboring country is reached by regular passenger trains. The last exception was the Namibian TransNamib , which offered regular connections between Windhoek and Upington (until around 2008).

Freight transport

Rail-based freight transport is the most important type of goods transport in South Africa. Freight traffic is primarily aimed at the ports of South Africa, such as Richards Bay , Durban , Cape Town , Port Elizabeth with the port of Ngqura and East London as well as the Mozambican port of Maputo . The City Deep Container Terminal , the largest freight transport center in Africa, is located in Johannesburg .

The 861 km long “ ore railway ” from Sishen to the port of Saldanha on the Atlantic Ocean was specially built to transport ore and is the only line in South Africa to be operated with 50 kV alternating current .

To relieve and reorganize freight traffic on the Richards Bay Coal Line between Mpumalanga and the port of Richards Bay , a bypass route, called Swazilink , with a partial route across Swaziland has been in planning since 2012 .

history

Development of the route network

The first railway line in South Africa was the standard-gauge, approximately three-kilometer-long line Durban – Point of the Natal Railway , which opened on June 26, 1860 .

In 1862 the Cape Town – Eersterivier line was completed by the Cape Town Railway and Dock Company . Together with the section to Wellington , opened in 1865, the route was 72 kilometers long. The first locomotive on the line is still a monument in Cape Town's train station. 1864 followed the route Cape Town- Wynberg the Wynberg Railway Company .

In 1880 the first section of the Natal Main Line from Durban to Pietermaritzburg was opened. The line was laid out in Cape Gauge, the standard gauge Natal Railway in Durban was taken over by the Natal Government Railways in 1877 and relocated to Cape Gauge.

Train with steam locomotive on the edge Tram track in front of the covered platform of the station Johannesburg Park

The first railway line in what was then the Transvaal Republic led from Johannesburg to Boksburg to the coal mines there. It was opened in 1890 by the Nederlandsch-Zuid-Afrikaansche Spoorweg Maatschappij (NZASM) and was known as the Rand Tram (German: "Tram of the Witwatersrand area"), although it was a railway line that was initially very easy Had superstructure. In the same year the line was extended in both directions to Krugersdorp and Springs .

In 1892 the industrial areas of the Transvaal were connected to the ports of Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and East London via Bloemfontein.

In 1894, the NZASM opened the Pretoria – Lourenço Marques railway , which connects Pretoria with today's Maputo . This route had already been specifically considered around 1880, as it promised lower freight costs due to the relatively short distance to the Indian Ocean and Portugal's favorable customs policy. A bond of half a million pounds on the Amsterdam capital market failed in the 1880s. The steep mountain slopes and the deep valley cuts on the Transvaal side not far from Komatipoort in the area of ​​the Crocodile River formed a serious obstacle to the route planning . These terrain characteristics had once delayed the construction of an efficient road. After the railway line was continuously passable, for many decades it was one of the most important transport routes for goods from northern South Africa that had to be brought to the sea. Coal, steel and sugar ended up at the ports in Maputo and in this way to power plants and other consumers on the coast of South Africa. In the course of a government policy aimed at economic independence, the Bothanomics of Pieter Willem Botha and the changed political situation in southern Africa, especially in Mozambique , South Africa began with the construction of a new railway line via Swaziland to the Richards Bay freight port in eastern Natal Gained importance. As a result, freight from the eastern Transvaal regions could be delivered to a separate seaport in politically safe territory. In this context, Pretoria tried to push the influence of the SADCC away from the small neighboring country.

In 1898 a line was built from Kimberley via Mafeking to the colonies of Bechuanaland , Southern Rhodesia and Northern Rhodesia (today: Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia). In the same year the province of Natal was connected to the South African network by a route to the Transvaal. This created a nationwide network. The plans for this went back to Cecil Rhodes , who had strived for a rail network " from Cape Town to Cairo ".

Johannesburg Park Station, Westkopf (1991)

After the Second Boer War , the NZASM became Central South African Railways (CSAR). After the four provinces of Cape Province , Orange Free State , Transvaal and Natal merged to form the South African Union in 1910 , CSAR, Cape Government Railways and Natal Government Railways were merged to form South African Railways & Harbors (SAR & H) in 1916 .

In April 1981 the first steps were taken to commercialize the state railway company. In place of SAR & H, the company-run South African Transport Services (SATS) was founded, which also included other modes of transport. On April 1, 1990, it finally became the state-owned company Transnet . Until 2007, the Transnet subsidiary responsible for rail traffic was called Spoornet (German roughly: "Gleisnetz"). In 1997 Metrorail was spun off from Spoornet and became an independent subsidiary, which has since been responsible for the operation of local trains in the metropolitan areas. In 2007 Spoornet was renamed Transnet Freight Rail . This is intended to express the priority of freight transport in South Africa. The handling of passenger traffic was outsourced in 2006 and, together with Shosholoza Meyl, transferred in individual steps to the newly founded Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA). An extensive range of technical services, however, remained with Transnet.

25NC 3439 with a freight train at Orange River Station (1985)

Locomotives

For a long time, steam locomotives were primarily used to transport the trains. The high efficiency of the locomotives and the availability of coal from domestic production contributed to this. Particularly successful steam locomotive types were Garratt locomotives, which were procured in Cape gauge and 610 mm gauge, and class 25 locomotives. Some of them were built by Henschel in Germany. The Red Devil steam locomotive (German: "Red Devil") emerged from a class 25 steam locomotive and is still the most powerful narrow-gauge steam locomotive in the world.

Series locomotives SAR Class 1E were the first electric locomotives in the South African line flying. Their commissioning period began in 1925 and these vehicles were in service until the 1980s.

After the first diesel locomotive went into service in Durban in 1958, the South African Railways decided in 1970 to replace the steam locomotives. In 1988 more than 600 steam locomotives were still in use. Other steam locomotives were in operation at industrial railways.

The railway in the apartheid era

After 1948, the state railways were gradually taken over by the ideological fields of action of apartheid policy . There was strict racial segregation in the passenger cars, which was already indicated by signs on the car's entrance doors. Likewise, the entrances at larger stations were separated into " non- whites " and " whites ". It was not until the late 1980s that these restrictions were gradually lifted. Socio-economic concerns of the “non-white” population were given insufficient consideration in the development of the transport infrastructure.

Trams

In cities like Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria, and Durban, there were electrically powered trams. The first South African tram opened in Johannesburg in 1890. All routes were closed by the early 1960s. A two-kilometer tram line was set up in Kimberley in 1985 , primarily for tourist purposes. It is still in operation today (as of 2010).

Others

A train that is unique in the world is the Phelophepa clinic train , which is used for outpatient treatment of patients in rural areas.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Department of Public Enterprises. on www.dpe.gov.za ( Memento from January 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (Ministry's website, English)
  2. ↑ Website of the South African Ministry of Transport ( Memento of March 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  3. ↑ a b c data at indexmundi.com (English), accessed on April 20, 2013
  4. ^ Railways & Harbors. Web presence
  5. ^ Official website of the Shosholoza trains , accessed on January 16, 2016
  6. ↑ a b Routes and times of the Shosholoza trains (English), accessed on December 17, 2015
  7. ↑ Timetable Mafikeng – Johannesburg and Mafikeng – Kimberley (English; PDF), accessed on December 16, 2015
  8. ^ Website of the city of Grahamstown ( Memento of February 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  9. ↑ Information on the ore railway ( Memento from November 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  10. ↑ a b c d Information on Transnet (English)
  11. ^ Bruno Martin: The Opening of the Railway between Durban and Pietermaritzburg . Ed .: Natal Society Foundation. No. 10 , 1980, pp. 34–40 ( pdf [accessed March 15, 2016]).
  12. ↑ NZASM Structures of the Rand Tram. In: The Heritage Portal. Retrieved February 27, 2016 .
  13. ↑ without author: The gold fields of Transvaal . In: Petermann's communications. 31 vol. (1885), Gotha, p. 89
  14. ↑ Joseph Hanlon: Mozambique. Revolution in the crossfire . Edition southern Africa, Bonn 1986, ISBN 3-921614-25-2 , p. 256
  15. ↑ Development Bank of Southern Africa , Development Planning Division: The State of South Africa's Economic Infrastructure: Opportunities and challenges 2012 . ISBN 978-1-920227-14-2 . Digitized version ( memento from October 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (archive version).
  16. ↑ a b Günter Feuereissen: steam over Africa . Gondrom, Bindlach 1990, ISBN 3-8112-0721-0
  17. ^ Hugh Burns: SAR Class 1E electric locomotive - Metrovick 46 class design origins . In: Sydney Electric Train Society. at www.sets.org.au