Heidelberg Station receives heritage blue plaque
After the erection of Heidelberg Station, the section engineer, H Westenburg, laid the cornerstone on September 24, 1894.
Exactly 127 years later, Heidelberg Station received a blue plaque declaring it a heritage site. This was the main station on the southeastern line and was used until the new station was opened in 1961.
The station building was declared a national monument in 1975 and operated as the old transport museum by the Rupert Foundation until 2004. The Heidelberg Railway Station was officially opened on Paul Kruger’s birthday on October 10, 1895.
This railway line was supposed to encourage free trade between Johannesburg and Durban for the ZAR (Zuid Afrikaanse Republic). The concession holder, “Nederlandsche Zuid Afrikaanse Spoorweg Maatschappij” (NZASM), was enforced by law to assist the ZAR government in the Anglo Boer War.
They had to transport prisoners of war and even had to sabotage their own railway lines. The struggle ended after the war when the British summarily cancelled the concession and their employees were repatriated.
On November 15, 1899, the prisoners of war from the derailed British train were transported from Frere to Pretoria via Heidelberg.
Allegations were made that the prisoners were kept in the cellar of this building for the evening. One of the prisoners was a certain Winston Churchill, a journalist from the Morning Post. He would later struggle for his own freedom by escaping from Pretoria.
As the leader of Great Britain, he would later take up Gen Jan S Smuts, who was well-known at Heidelberg Station in his war cabinet during The Second World War.
In 1961, Dr HF Verwoerd reaped the fruits of an independent Republic. He became the premier of South Africa standing for the Heidelberg constituency. He officially opened the new station building in 1961, after the old station building fell into disuse.
Some time later, many soldiers would visit Heidelberg en route to undergo compulsory military service during the “struggle” of power to the exclusion of many.
On November 22, 1975, premier BJ Vorster declared the building a historic building when opening the transport museum. The plaque was sponsored by Bean to Heidelberg Coffee Shop, which is one of the onsite restaurants that today make out part of the Heidelberg Heritage Museum.
