South African steam locomotives scrapped following damage by thieves
By Paul
Ash
Published: September 28, 2010
A priceless collection of steam
locomotives has been cut up for scrap in
Johannesburg after suffering
irreparable damage at the hands of scrap
thieves.
The 27 locomotives,
which belonged to South African National Rail and
Steam Museum, a nonprofit
preservation group, were gifts from the former
South African Railways and
various mining houses and industries that had
once used them on their private
railways. The collection had been stored
on tracks on an open space near an
industrial township west of
Johannesburg.
Some of the locomotives
dated back to the late 19th century and included
sole survivors of their
type.
Museum secretary Mike Dyke told TRAINS that visitors to the
Chamdor site
two weeks ago saw thieves with professional cutting equipment
torching
parts from the locomotives in broad daylight.
“Our own
security people were chased away by scrap thieves wielding
firearms,” Dyke
said. Police allegedly told the museum they could do
nothing.
The
museum is little more than a stretch of reclaimed mining land next
to a
rapidly growing informal settlement.
Metal theft is an endemic problem
in the country where unemployment tops
25 percent and much of the population
lives in poverty. National rail
operator Transnet Freight Rail loses almost
half a mile of overhead
catenary wire every day to scrap thieves, resulting
in delayed and
cancelled trains as sections of the electrified network are
closed for
repair.
Railfans, angry that the preserved locomotives
were not guarded, said
the museum had been previously warned that the
locomotives were at risk
from thieves. Dyke said museum officials had applied
to government for
funds to build a wall around the site but had been
rebuffed.
Following the reports that illegal scrapping was taking place,
the
museum was quoted 25,000 rand (about $3,570) a day to place
24-hour
armed guards on the site. A survey showed the locomotives were too
badly
damaged to restore; in most cases the thieves had cut the frames to
get
at the valuable brass and bearing in the axle boxes, and
museum
officials called in local recycling firm Reclam to cut up what was
left.
“There was no alternative,” Dyke said.
At Chamdor, scrapping is
proceeding rapidly. Amid the swirling dust and
smoke and the hiss of cutting
torches, four guards with shotguns patrol
the site night and day, keeping the
scrap thieves at bay.
“More than 40 guys ran away when we arrived,
leaving all their tools
behind,” said Reclam Outside Projects Manager Mathew
Spangenberg. “We
told them to come back at collect their tools. As they did
so they said
they would be back later with 9mm pistols.”
The company
expects to finish the job by Monday. “We are doing it as
quick as we can,” he
said.
The museum plans use the proceeds to improve the security for
other its
remaining steam locomotives that are stored at other sites.
South African rail preservation groups battle with shortages of
funds
and volunteer labor, and many restoration projects are unlikely to
ever
be completed.
“There are just too many locomotives out there,”
said Chris Janisch,
chairman of the Heritage Rail Association of South
Africa. “There are
enough resources to save a limited number. The rest must
go, in the name
of saving the others.”
While rail tourism was growing
business worldwide, Janisch noted that
locally rail heritage, with its
colonial echoes, had become a political
hot potato that nobody wanted to
handle. He said the association has
tried lobbying the country’s tourism
officials. “But we can’t even get
an interview [with the tourism minister],”
he said.
The scrapping debacle comes shortly after the Passenger Rail
Agency of
South Africa, the country's state-run passenger train
operator,
announced that it was suspending all long-distance passenger
trains
pending a review of their viability. Officials there blamed
the
suspension on a pricing dispute with Transnet Freight Rail
for
maintenance work carried out on its locomotives and passenger cars.
Some
25 trains were affected, including the semi-luxury Premier
Classe
trains, which are popular with tourists.
Some train schedules
between Johannesburg and the port cities of Durban
and Cape Town have been
restored, while bus services have been
introduced on other routes.
South Africa once boasted a countrywide passenger train network
until
sweeping timetable cuts began in mid-1980s. Since then, rail
passenger
traffic has been further eroded by minibus taxis; cheap,
long-distance
coaches; and the startup of three low-cost airlines.
PAUL ASH is a career journalist with the Sunday Times newspaper
in
Johannesburg, South Africa. He writes about travel, transportation,
and
agriculture, and in his leisure time, he kayaks and
photographs
railroads.
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