Sandstone and the RSR

[John Ashworth]

Statement released by Sandstone on 4th June 2019:

The collection of assets at Sandstone Estates is very securely housed, maintained and operated where necessary. At present we are involved in a high level dialogue with the Rail Safety Regulator concerning the need to adopt a Heritage Railway specification in South Africa, more specifically for 2-ft Narrow Gauge railways that are ring-fenced or isolated from any other railway network.

The Rail Safety Regulator has only one specification in South Africa and we are being treated as a Main Line railway and therefore we are having various restrictions placed on our operations and we are having to upgrade parts of our infrastructure at enormous costs to levels that we believe are entirely unnecessary for the axle loading and speed of operation of our railway.

Our current Rail Safety Regulator permit expires at the end of 2019 but going beyond that we have advised the RSR that we cannot comply with the demands being made on us with regard to Civil Engineering issues, nor can we comply with the requirement that all repairs to locomotives be placed under their control and be subjected to inspections.

One should appreciate that there are enormous costs which accompany each and every one of these regulations which are currently being promulgated quicker than we can deal with them.

We have worked hard for many years to accommodate the Rail Safety Regulator’s long list of demands but we have reached the stage where it is unsustainable for a railway that operates at slow speeds like ours.

We have forwarded copies of the British Heritage Rail specifications to the authorities with a strong recommendation that they implement something similar in South Africa.

The rumours that are going around regarding the disposal of Heritage assets etc. are entirely incorrect. We are simply in a state of limbo while we negotiate with the authorities to take a more realistic view of operations like ours.

Statement released by Sandstone Heritage Trust - 4 June 2019 - click here to view

[John Ashworth]

Posted by Les Smith on the sar-l io-group on 26th June 2019:

Credit to Trevor Heath.

Update on the Sandstone situation with input from Mr. Mole and others.

Mr. Mole would prefer a term like "mothballed" be used rather than "closed". He further states however that there are no planned future events, that it is unlikely that he will authorize the mass certification of boilers for a future event and, that the farm is no place for a static museum often going 6 months without a single visitor. He says he is taking stand against the Rail Safety Regulator (RSR) and their rule book as it is applied to Sandstone. The RSR is in a difficult position in it's mandate to oversee all rail operations in South Africa with one rule book. It has been suggested that Sandstone remove itself from RSR oversight by applying to the South African Department of Labour for amusement park status. That decision is of course for Sandstone to make. It appears that the workshop lease at Bloemfontein was with Mr. Nel not Sandstone and this explains why the New Zealand leased and owned locomotives including the Garrett's were allowed to be housed there. Mr. Nel continues to monitor the security of the locomotives in his care. I have asked in the light of all the above why when the empty Sandstone truck was sent to Humewood Road to pick their third 91 class diesel why the NG11 Garratt 54 "Solly" was not returned from Sandstone storage to it's ancestral home for overhaul there. No reply at the moment.