All aboard the Inchanga Choo Choo!

In the 1850s the first steam locomotives clattered and clashed across South Africa, leading the charge of progress.

Today they are a rarity, preserved mainly by groups of passionate volunteers who make it possible to experience the wonder of steam travel.

Younger readers might conjure up images of the Hogwarts Express, taking Harry Potter and his friends to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Others might have heard stories told by their parents or grandparents of the luxury of a ride on a steam train in their youth.

Whatever your perception, to step aboard the Inchanga Choo Choo is to step back into a time long past, into refined carriages that carried the genteel of society across the country at unprecedented speed.

Aboard you will feel the rattle and rush of the locomotive as it powers forward, puffing a trail of smoke behind.

You will feel like royalty as people stop along the tracks to take photos and wave as you steam past.

The Inchanga Choo Choo is fired up once a month, offering a memorable ride from Kloof Railway Station through the Valley of 1 000 Hills to Inchanga, where a craft and food market bustles around the old station.

The Station Master’s house has been turned into a museum, where the children will delight to see the mini model trains racing around.

Volunteer and museum curator Adrian Rowe said ‘Wesley’, the locomotive being used to pull the carriages, was built in Germany in 1937.

Their oldest locomotive ‘Maureen’ is over 100 years old, but she is in frail care for now.

“We can no longer buy parts for her as nobody makes them anymore, so we have to manufacture them ourselves,” said Rowe, who has loved trains since he was a boy and travelled to school by train in England.

“Those train rides, 3 times a year, were the highlight of my school days.”

Now Rowe is one of 120 volunteers who keep the steam trains operational and maintain the tracks, library and museum.

The Umgeni Steam Railway non-profit is run solely on donations and what they make from the monthly excursions.

It’s an expensive exercise, says Rowe, and they have been hurt badly by lockdown.

Just starting the locomotive’s engine puts us back R25 000 for the coal.

The fire has to be started the night before, with volunteers staying up to keep it going, in order for it to be hot enough to run the train the next morning.

Among their members, 2 have qualified as train drivers.

“To get a driver certified, PRASA (The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa) have to bring a retired consultant out from Pretoria to conduct the test,” said Rowe, testifying to the effort needed to keep alive the skills required to maintain these relics of a bygone era.

The Inchanga Choo Choo runs on the last Sunday of each month unless otherwise stated on the schedule.

Additional runs are planned during special holiday periods like Christmas and Easter.

Trains depart from Kloof Railway Station:

•  August 28 at 12.30pm
• August 29 at 8.30am and 12.30pm

Tickets are R260 (adults) and R190 (children under 12 and pensioners).

Children under 2 are free (lap passengers). A family package is R800.

For more information visit umgenisteamrailway.com.

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