Rayton bank at 110 km/h!

Steam motive power and operations in Southern Africa
Post Reply
User avatar
John Ashworth
Site Admin
Posts: 23606
Joined: 24 Jan 2007, 14:38
Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Contact:

Rayton bank at 110 km/h!

Post by John Ashworth »

From "The Red Devil and other tales from the age of steam", David Wardale, p 207:

One day no load was available for the outward trip to Witbank. On the 140m climb from Panpoort to Rayton I asked [driver] Vos to open up a bit and we took the grade (maximum 18%) at about 110 km h-1, only to be stopped by a red signal at Rayton station. Vos used the telephone by the signal to speak with the CTC operator and it transpired that we had zoomed past the axle counter of a hot box detector so fast that the counter had registered zero axles, and the Control wanted to know were we a ghost train or something?
Post Reply

Return to “South Africa - Steam Motive Power”