NZASM

The authors of NZASM 100, the definitive study of the railway architecture of the Nederlandsche Zuid-Afrikaansche Spoorweg-Maatschappij (NZASM), describe the tunnel at Waterval Boven as ‘probably the best-known and most famous of all NZASM structures’. We visited this Provincial Heritage Site recently and it is certainly a sight to behold. Add the overall natural beauty of the area and the view of the stunning Elands Waterfall and it is not surprising that the site is a major tourist attraction.

The Waterval Boven tunnel formed part of the Eastern or Delagoa Railway which was of great strategic importance to the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR) giving the young country access to a non-British seaport (essential to preserve political and economic independence in the face of British imperialism). After extensive planning, work on the tunnel commenced in October 1892. Two teams blasted and drilled their way through the rock and joined up in September 1893. Railway tracks were laid and the tunnel walls were lined with stone masonry for strength. This outstanding piece of engineering was completed in 1894 and a year later the Eastern Railway opened to much celebration throughout the ZAR.

The eastern entrance of the tunnel shortly after completion (NZASM 100)

The historic 211m tunnel is open to tourists who can walk through and admire the achievements of a...

Below is the second part of an article compiled by NZASM expert Robert de Jong in the late 1980s (the Nederlansche Zuid-Afrikaansche Spoorweg-Maatschappij (NZASM) was a Dutch company responsible for the construction and administration of many early Transvaal railway lines). The first piece looked at the structures and buildings of the Rand Tram while this one looks at the Southern Line. Very little NZASM architecture has survived on these lines due to rapid economic growth in the region over the decades.

When work on the construction of the Rand Tram started in 1889, it was already deemed highly probably that at no distant date the harbours of the Cape Colony and Natal would be connected with the Transvaal railways in order to reach the Witwatersrand. The Transvaal Government recognised the importance of the different lines being worked by the same company (NZASM), with the object to protect the Delagoa Bay Line against isolation and the loss of its privileged status.

In June 1890 the Volksraad sanctioned the construction of a railway line from Pretoria to the Vaal River, where it would join a railway which was projected through the Orange Free State to the harbours of the Cape Colony.

The Southern Line (Pretoria-Vaal River) consisted of three sections: the Rand Tram cut the line in two halves at Elandsfontein, and the third part was made up by the section Elandsfontein-Johannesburg, which would be doubled and thus no longer form part of the Rand Tram system.

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Robert De Jong is one of the foremost experts on the Nederlansche Zuid-Afrikaansche Spoorweg-Maatschappij (NZASM), a Dutch company responsible for the construction and administration of many early Transvaal railway lines. The following article, which looks at various structures associated with the Rand Tram, appeared in a number of publications in the late 1980s. In the introduction (not published below) De Jong expressed hope that the article would stimulate an interest in railway architecture which 'has been, like mining architecture, up to now a relatively neglected field of research in South Africa.'. Two and a half decades later we share these sentiments.

The Uitlander population on the Witwatersrand got their railway before the Government was able to run any train to Delagoa Bay. In the end this line, started as a humble transport arrangement for coal to the 'diggings', was to carry the heaviest rail traffic in the ZAR. The Rand Tram proved to be the first and one of the most successful exercises of railway construction in the Transvaal. And had not the abortive Jameson Raid influenced events during the years 1896-1899, the central station, Park Station at Johannesburg, would have boasted one of the finest railway buildings in all of South Africa.

North-eastern view of the covered platform of Park Station 1897 (NZASM 100)...

In the first installment of the series on the history of Southern African railways, Peter Ball described some of the earliest railways in the country and the extension of a number of lines into the interior. In this article he looks at the fascinating politics and economics of the 'Race for the Rand'.

Johannesburg was literally and figuratively built on Gold, the discovery of which in 1886 was to change the entire economic and financial structure of South Africa. The inconvenient truth for Britain was that the Rand Goldfields were in another country, to be exact the Transvaal Republic (a.k.a. South African Republic), which had regained its independence, after the Battle of Majuba Hill, Natal on the 27th February 1881.

Johannesburg, springing up as it did in the midst of a rural, land locked Boer republic, was situated 345 miles (555 km) inland from the nearest harbour (Delagoa Bay); it had grown, within four years, from a mining camp into a boom town (second only in size to Cape Town) and urgently needed good communications to develop further.

Johannesburg in the early 1890s (Seventy Golden Years, Johannesburg City Council)

The Race to the Rand was a three (iron) horse race over many physical and political hurdles and the riders wore the colours of the Cape...