In South Africa railway men do things big and it doesn't get bigger than the Sishen-Saldanha line. In 1989 the longest and heaviest train in the world made an historic trip down the line. The article below, compiled by Norman Chandler for The Star, tells the story of this record breaking feat. It appears as though a train in Australia broke the record in 2001.
Nightmares do have silver linings, railwaymen happily discovered this weekend. After hours of high drama, South African Transport Services are today toasting a world record for the longest and heaviest train ever run - a 7.281km monster that travelled 861km from Sishen to Saldanha Bay.
In all, 660 fully-laden ore trucks, nine electric locomotives, seven Diesel engines and three other cars made the journey, which began at Sishen at 12.45 on Saturday afternoon and ended at Saldanha at 3.40pm yesterday. But it was a close thing.
The Monster
Dubbed "The Monster", the train - which if placed on Johannesburg's M1 motorway would cover the distance from the Jan Smuts Avenue on-ramp to just short of the Corlett Drive exit - finally left Erts station, here, nearly seven hours late. On its journey it generated sufficient power to light a city the size of Port Elizabeth.
Seven years in the planning, SATS had everything ready for this weekend's bid for a place in the Guiness Book of Records as having run the longest and heaviest train ever assembled. The trucks, pulled and pushed by 16 Class 9E electric and diesel locomotives , dwarfed the 1967 feat of...
