This is the second in a five-part series written by a Rhodes Journalism student whose inspiration came from a chance encounter with the vandalism at the Grahamstown train station.
This is the second in a five-part series written by a Rhodes Journalism student whose inspiration came from a chance encounter with the vandalism at the Grahamstown train station.
The date was Saturday 22 April 1911, and 56 passengers, including locals, students and families, were aboard the 10.20 from Port Alfred to Grahamstown.
The Dold and Smith families, all with their young children were aboard, bubbling with excitement as they returned home after their holiday away.
The crisp, clear day held no hint of the tragedy that would soon occur as the train approached the Blaaukrantz Bridge, a sturdy metal structure 90 metres high that crossed the gorge over the Blaaukrantz River.
Just behind the engine three trucks were attached. Two filled with stones were being taken to Grahamstown as building material for the nave of the cathedral, and one with fresh pineapples.
Behind this load were the four carriages carrying passengers on their way to Grahamstown.
Yet 29 of the 56 travellers never made it to their destination alive, as the overweight trucks of stone caused the locomotive to sway dangerously across the bridge before derailing and sending the entire train spiralling over the edge and crashing into the stream below.
The Dold family was completely wiped out. Five-year-old Dorothy and three-year-old William were the only survivors of the Smith family, their parents and younger brother were victims of the disaster, the biggest tragedy in peacetime South Africa.
The trains ran continuously after the accident, yet all private lines were discontinued as the government took over the tracks, enforcing a new law that disallowed passengers and goods to travel on the same train.
The Grahamstown station continued operating as the hub of all railway activity in the area, a major employer of locals in the district and the main transport link for residents of the City of Saints. The Blaaukrantz Bridge was reconstructed in 1929.
The tracks date back to 1862 when work began on the line as locals had been searching for a quicker means of transporting their goods from Grahamstown to Port Alfred.
After years of struggles, delays, problems with imported building material and financial constraints, the line was officially completed in 1884. Six years prior, a smaller line joining Grahamstown to Alicedale was completed, with the maiden voyage taking place on 3 September 1879.
Construction of the Grahamstown Station began a year earlier, and was completed just in time for the first train to depart to Alicedale. But that’s all over now.
No trains arrive at or depart from the Grahamstown station.
Fleur Way-Jones, curator of the Albany Museum, reflected on the days when “the train was a major thing in the town”.
“People went to war on the train when they joined up for the First World War, the Second World War,” she said, going to a dark dingy storeroom to dig up old pamphlets and books on the train.
“People said goodbye to people on the train. Many students arrived on the train.”
Since the opening of Rhodes University in 1904, countless students would make use of Grahamstown’s railway system to arrive at and depart from the university.
Many of them came from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), making the three-day journey across South Africa’s northern border and down to the Eastern Cape. The much shorter trip to Port Alfred was a highlight for many, as students, families and young couples alike would make the trip to the seaside in the morning and return in the evening, often on a Sunday.
In 1986, Grahamstown celebrated a memorial centenary ride to Port Alfred, a joyous occasion to remember the 100 years of railway transportation to and from the coastal town.
Way-Jones hurried off into one of the offices in the museum, scampering back with an envelope filled with photos from that last ride.
The curator was not aboard, but she fondly gazed through the photographs, pointing out friends who had dressed up for the occasion.
The mayor poses cheerfully alongside the steam engine, next to a group of Kingswood College boys dressed in soldier uniforms for the day.
That line closed in 2000.
Way-Jones remembered it fondly, as she would pass through Alicedale on her way to Port Elizabeth, and then on to Johannesburg.
“It was a nice afternoon’s trip,” she said.
“The whistle would blow, and off it went, a couple of chugs here and there.”
