During the last decade of the nineteenth century, events in Southern Africa were dominated by the gold rush as adventurers scrambled to exploit the newly discovered in the Johannesburg area. This and the egos of and animosity between the financier and Cape Colony prime minister Cecil John Rhodes and the aging and dour president of the Transvaal Republic Paul Kruger resulted in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902.

The railways played a major part in the conduct of the war, both for transporting troops and during the guerilla phase of the war, segmenting the country. The railways that were under British military control were operated as a military unit known as British Imperial Railways. The director was Col Percy Girouard (later Sir Pery Girouard). A by-product of his report (1903), written once the railways had been returned to civilian rule shows that some parts of the system were designed and built using metric rather than imperial units. Unfortunately, once the war was over this degree of metrication was reversed under the pretext of Imperial Preferences.

Context

In 1885, European settlers controlled four territories in Southern Africa – two British Colonies, the Cape Colony and the Natal Colony alongside two Boer republics, the Orange Free State (OFS) and the Transvaal or South African Republic (ZAR). The British colonies had introduced railways and were expanding them inland as funds permitted. Both the Cape Colony and the Natal Colony used the narrow 3’6” (now 1067 mm) railway gauge rather than the standard 4’8½” (now 1435 mm) gauge. In contrast, the impoverished Boer republics had no railways, though there was a desire within the ZAR to access the sea without passing through British held territory by building a railway to Delagoa Bay (modern day Maputo) which was under Portuguese control.

In 1886 everything changed. Gold was discovered in what is now the Johannesburg area. Adventurers flocked to the new town to seek their fortune and a race was on between the coastal colonies to build railways to link the goldfields to the sea. The ZAR civil service, unable to cope with the influx of newcomers, recruited staff from the Netherlands, especially those who, like Kruger, were Doppers (a branch of the Dutch Reformed Church).

Kruger, ever anxious to avoid British control of his access to the sea encouraged the floating by Dutch and German financiers of the Nederlandsche Zuid-Afrikaansche Spoorwegmaatschappij (Netherlands–South African Railway Company or NZASM) to build the dreamed-of line to Delagoa Bay. The port facilities in Delagoa Vay were minimal compared to those in the British colonies and to ensure eventual inter-connection with the colonial railway systems, NZASM used the same gauge as the coastal colonies. Kruger also prohibited the building of any other railway lines within the ZAR until the NZASM line was complete.

In Natal, railway construction accelerated and within a few years the Natal Government Railways (NGR) had reached the Transvaal border. The Cape colonial government, realising that their best route to the goldfields was via the OFS, came to an arrangement with the OFS government that the Cape Colony would finance a railway through the OFS territory and would operate the railway for their own profit for five years after which time it would be handed over to the OFS government.

Construction of the Delagoa Bay line hit problems when it had to climb the escarpment reaching a height of 1700 metres above sea-level. In order to speed up the building of the Delagoa Bay line, Kruger permitted the building of the link from the OFS border to Pretoria thereby enabling the NZASM line to be built from both ends. Once the Delagoa Bay line was complete, Kruger permitted the Natal Colonial Government to fund the building of a railway on NZASM’s behalf that would link the NGR network to the rest of the NZASM network.

Once these lines were in place, NZASM adopted a policy of discriminatory pricing that favoured the Delagoa Bay line. This led to the “Drift Crisis” and contributed indirectly to the Jameson Raid and finally the outbreak of war.

In the interim, NZASM built a line to the south-west, but this line was not particularly profitable, so they agreed to a British company building and operating a line northwards from Pretoria to Pietersburg (halfway to the Rhodesian (now Zimbabwean) border.

War between the Boer Republics and the United Kingdom broke out on 12 October 1899. The war itself can be divided into three phases:

• In the first phase, which lasted for about six weeks, the Boers had numeric superiority. They laid siege to the British towns of Mafeking, Ladysmith and Kimberley.
• During the second phase, which lasted about six months, the British, reinforced by troops from around the Empire pushed the Boers back and finally occupied the Boer capitals of Bloemfontein and Pretoria. As the Boers retreated, they wrecked as much of the railway lines as possible.
• During the third phase, the Boers resorted to guerilla tactics, while the British consolidated their position by extending control across the whole of the Transvaal. During this phase of the Boer War, the Boers regularly ambushed British trains and blew up culverts and bridges. Towards the end of this phase, the only railway line under Boer control was in the region of the Portuguese border and, in an act of final desperation, destroyed as much railway rolling stock as they could.

At the start of the second phase, part of the British strategy was to set up a military organisation, the Imperial British Railways under the control of Percy Girouard.

Girouard’s Report

Once the war had finished, Girouard published a formal report that ran to 142 pages of which 58 pages catalogued incidents caused by Boer action. Each entry has as a minimum the location, date and summary of the incident. The list is divided up geographically.

The locations of the incidents were denoted by reference to the nearest location marker. These markers show the distance from the nominal start of the line. In the case of the lines in the Cape Colony, Natal Colony and OFS, the distances were quoted in miles. In the case of lines located in the ZAR, regardless of whether the line was funded by Dutch and German financiers, the Natal Colony or the Cape Colony, distances were quoted in kilometres.

The damage to pillars is usually described using imperial units though the lengths of prefabricated spans is given in the units used by the original manufacturer. On page 50, he summarised the number and length of bridge spans repaired or replaced. There are two columns of figures – one for spans that were designed using metric units and one for spans designed using imperial units. From the catalogue of repairs effected, it appears that all the bridges in the ZAR were designed using metric units, but those in the other three territories were designed using imperial units. From an engineering point of view the 48 cm difference between a 30-metre span and a 100-foot span is significant when the new span had to be laid on existing pillars, so it was essential that the dimensions of spans that had to be repaired were correctly identified.

Although Girouard made minimal mention of the locomotives used, other than to give the numbers, I made an investigation from Wikipedia of two locomotives, the ZAR NZASM 46 tonner and the CGR Class 6 locomotive. This investigation showed that the NZASM engine, manufactured in Germany, was designed using metric units – wheel sizes of 810 and 1300 mm and cylinders with a bore of 430 mm and a stroke of 630 mm while the Class 6 locomotive, built in the United Kingdom, was designed using imperial units – wheel sizes of 28½, 54 and 37 inches and cylinders with a 17 inch bore and 28 inch stoke.

Aftermath

The War ended on 31 May 1902 with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging. The Boer republics became British colonies, the Imperial Military Railway unit was disbanded, and the railways of the Orange River Colony and the Transvaal Colony being merged into a single organisation – the “Central South Africa Railways” (CSAR). The CSAR was operated by a council which was responsible to the joint governments of the two former Boer republics. Girouard resigned his commission and was appointed civilian director of the new organisation. On 31 May 1910, the four colonies were united to form the Union of South Africa and on 1 January 1912 the railway companies of all four colonies were amalgamated to form “South African Railways” (SAR).

In the years preceding the war, the Transvaal Republic took delivery of 175 46 tonner locomotives, but only 44 of these were entered onto the SAR roster in 1912, the rest having been destroyed, sold or scrapped. By 1919 SAR had disposed of all its 46 tonners. A similar fate befell other NZASM locomotives. In contrast the Class 6 locomotives continued in service until after the Second World War. With the phasing out of the NZASM rolling stock and the adoption of Imperial Preference most of the new South African rolling stock was built in the United Kingdom or later, in South Africa itself. As a result, until the early 1970’s when South Africa adopted the metric system, all South African railway design took place using imperial units – for example, the 1953 SAR annual report shows the lengths of all lines in miles and chains.

Sources of Maps

• 1890 network: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cape_Colony_and_neighbouring_states_1870-1890_b.jpg
• 1901 network: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SouthernAfricaRailwayMap_1901.png

References

• Girouard, EPC (1903). History of the Railways during the War in South Africa 1899-1902:  https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/History_of_the_Railways_During_the_War_i/JcM2AQAAMAAJ?hl=en
• NZASM 46 tonner: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Class_B_0-6-4T
• CGR Class 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Class_6_4-6-0