South Africa’s first, albeit primitive, rail infrastructure

John Milne, the man regarded as Durban’s first civil engineer, is most famous for his role as Port Natal’s (today the Port of Durban’s) first harbour engineer and his pioneering efforts to overcome the infamous submarine sandbar that naturally blocks the entrance to the lagoon, which, for the last century and a half, has been used as Southern Africa’s largest harbour facility.

Such was the nature and necessity of that project, which essentially involved the construction of a pier off the Point and a breakwater off the Bluff as a means of encouraging the tidal scour of the sandbar, that Milne’s other equally pioneering initiative – the construction of a short wooden rail track – has largely been overshadowed.

However, that project does deserve more recognition, as it can technically be regarded as South Africa’s very first rail infrastructure initiative.

As Milne’s pioneering harbour project has already been elaborated on (see the June 10 edition of Engineering News), it will be recalled that the sandstone required for the construction of the North Pier was initially quarried from a section of the Bluff directly opposite the Point. By the end of 1854, some 22 000 t had been excavated from the site and so it was decided to open another quarry at the end of the Bluff.

But, as it was well over a kilometre from this new quarry to the site where the stone could be conveyed across the mouth to the Point, a method of bulk transportation was necessitated. Milne decided that the most conceivable method would be a wooden rail track on which teams of oxen could pull wagons laden with the large blocks of stone.

Having agreed to this proposal, the Harbour Committee, anxious to make the mouth of the lagoon passable as speedily as possible, issued two main tenders for the project in February 1856.

The first tender, which included all the earthworks for the new track, was awarded to William Campbell and Richard Godden, two newly arrived immigrants from England who, it should be noted, also had the contract to supply the stone from the quarry.

The name of the person who won the second and main tender, which included the felling of trees and the supply of the timber for the tracks, has been lost from the historical record, but it is known that he was a handyman and claimed some degree of fame from the fact that he had once been a wagon driver for the legendary Dick King.

It must be pointed out that the sawing of raw logs into planks by handsaw is no easy task. This is especially true of the hard Red Milkwood, the abundant coastal tree native to KwaZulu-Natal, which was deemed most suitable for the application.

From the start of the sawing project, the handyman, who appears to have been assisted by a runaway sailor, experienced immense difficulties. Milne wrote: “Having begun work, it soon appeared that the saw, at least, was very perverse. She went out to windward and to leeward, whether they would or not, and that, therefore, they could not cut the rails straight as they were bound to. Moreover, these unfortunate men blamed not only the saw, but one another, and not agreeing on this latter point, they thrashed one another so tightly that the co-partnership was soon broken up.” A professional sawyer by the name of Robert Thompson was subsequently contracted to finish that contract and to lay the tracks.

The wooden track was completed without further drama in the first weeks of 1857 at a cost of £700 (roughly R1.2-million in today’s value).

The gauge of the track was 4 ft wide, with timber rails being wedged into slots cut into the half-log sleepers that were laid flat side down. The whole track, which was just on 1.6 km, was set 6 ft above high tide and hugged the Bluff side to a point on the lagoon where a loading jetty was proposed but never completed.

As already stated, the track had a fairly primitive method of haulage power, being operated by teams of oxen, which were ‘driven’ by sjambok-wielding Zulu men. Two teams of oxen were used to pull a train of four wagons at a time. It was said that the ‘train’ made such a noise that it could be heard from around the Bluff long before it came into view.

The wagons, which were built to Milne’s specifications, had a capacity of 3 t, so each team could convey 12 t of quarried stone at a time. The stone itself was cut into blocks weighing 227 kg. Every week, a new team of oxen was encouraged to swim across the mouth to relieve those that had worked their week’s shift.

At the end of the track, the stone was offloaded onto a specially adapted lighter vessel, dubbed the Camell, which transported the stone across the mouth of the lagoon. The cost of quarrying and transport of the stone was estimated at about R200, while the hire of the lighter was a further R150.

Unfortunately, there is no record of how effective South Africa’s first little rail track was because, as has been illustrated, work on Milne’s North Pier project was stopped in April 1857, just three months after the track was commissioned and, there being no need for the Bluff sandstone, the track fell into disuse. In fact, it was only for those short three months of 1857 that the pioneering rail track would ever be used.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the wooden track was overlain by a proper steel rail track, the purpose of which was to service the few whaling stations that were established on the ocean side of the Bluff. Although no longer in use since the mid-1970s, and largely covered by a gravel road and undergrowth, this track still exists today.