Paul Ash on sar-L wrote:I'll tell y'all some news.
I took the Thursday "special" SM from Joburg to Cape Town on 20 December.
I did not see the SMS from SM saying the train had been delayed until I got to Park Station.
The inbound train from CPT had been delayed for many hours due to cable theft at Bloemhof.
As the train had to be cleaned and serviced in the carriage yards, we had to wait. Fair enough.
The inbound Premier Classe had also been delayed for the same reason. So that train (supposed to depart at 10.30am) had to be serviced. And the Premier pac were hanging around grumpily in their gloomy reception room.
This was the deal: Premier Classe train to be serviced first, pax loaded then depart. After that, SM train loaded and depart.
We waited in the concourse, reading books and harassing SM staff, for 5 hours.
We boarded at around 4.30pm. Train finally departed at 5.30pm. All good.
Had a lovely journey, with pretty fast running ... Krugersdorp, Randfontein, Potch, Klerksdorp ... and on into the night.
Many waiting pax annoyed by the late pick-up. I was telling them to look at it this way: your holiday is longer. No-one thought that was funny. Ah well.
At 2am we stopped at a red signal in a loop. We waited
and waited
and waited
and ...
waited.
It was a lovely, still night. All around us was silence except the odd creaks and snuffles of a waiting train. Some time in the early morning I heard jackals calling.
At 7am, I got up and went to find the train manager. We were just south of Bloemhof. The train had been stopped because of ....
cable theft ...
.... in the same place as two nights before.
At 8am, they told us buses had been called from Bloem to take us on to Cape Town.
At 9am, the locos ran around, coupled up, and dragged us back to Bloemhof.
By 11.30am, my girl and I were on a cramped, luxury coach heading south.
At 1.30pm, my girl and I got off the bus at Kimberley station (the bus would arrive in CPT at 2am or 3am or whenever, and I was done with that). We called a taxi and went to the Kimberley Club, booked a room for the afternoon, had a glorious shower and ordered a bottle of champagne from the bar.
At 5.30pm, took a taxi to the airport and bought one-way tickets on the evening Airlink flight to Cape Town. (So we arrived, more or less the same time as we would have if the train had not been stopped by cable thieves).
It was a very nice day.
It cost us a bomb.
In February, I am taking the Friday train to Cape Town. Maybe this time it will get there on its own wheels.
The biggest irony is that, sitting in the Braamfontein yards are seven or eight beautiful, new diesel locomotives that are immune to cable theft and just waiting to be called to service.
I joked with Prasa official who was sent to mollify the increasingly angry passengers at Park Station that once the thieves had stolen all the 3kV cables, Prasa could start using the "too-tall" diesels without any bitching from TFR. He almost smiled.
