September 23, 2024 7:12 am
After a quick breakfast at Castello di Monte we transferred by a mini bus, with some other guests, to the Ravos Rail train station on what seemed to be the other side of Pretoria. We arrived around 8.30am for a 10am departure.
Plenty of time to look around the complex, including the railway museum. ‘Ravos’ is a contraction of the name of the fellow who owns the company…….Rohan Vos. The whole operation is based around the principle of ‘slow’ travel, no internet to distract from the late 1800s early 1900s train travel experience. Good food, conversation and wine in comfortable surroundings as the train and its carriages meander north to the Falls.
We had a quick look through the railway museum, a lot of colonial memorabilia of steam travel in southern Africa. Ravos has some short steam experiences but generally the locomotives are diesel, with some diesel electrics. The infrastructure for long distance steam travel has been dismantled. Along the way we saw a number of derelict water towers. Not unlike the Ghan in Australia , the operator owns the rolling stock and is charged for usage of the track infrastructure.
Rohan Vos is now in his late 70s but still performs an overview tour of the facility explaining various aspects of the operations.
The outfit has over 400 staff and runs tourist trains over various routes through southern Africa. Quite impressive chap and seems to have encyclopaedic knowledge of train engineering and operations.
We headed off north east a little late and made our way through the outer ‘suburbs’ of Pretoria and past light industrial complexes. All a bit messy with plenty of rubbish strewn around. We finally get away from the city scape and start the plod (the train does about 35km ph most of the time) north to Victoria Falls, about 1400km.
We are towards the end of the dry season and much of the thorny vegetation is leafless, boab trees are a common sight beside the track.
It is rocky sandy environment and looks a little like outback Australia. Small villages and some larger towns sit beside the railway line, small scale agriculture and cattle rearing the main activities.
We stop for some time overnight at Musina, not far from the Limpopo River. The Limpopo forms the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe and in the early morning we cross over into Zimbabwe.
We are reminded by the itinerary that the Limpopo features in Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Just So Stories’ when the ‘Elephant’s Child’ departs his family for the “great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees, to find out what the Crocodile has for dinner”.
I am sure my readers will remember this well so there is no need to dwell on it further.
After crossing the river we have a lengthy stop at Beitbridge for visa checking before we trundle further north towards Bulawayo.
Beitbridge has a very long platform so Allthego takes the opportunity for a head shot of the train, with the 500m of carriages disappearing into the hazy distance.
We now head for Bulawayo, where we will stop for the night, or at least for some hours before morning.
Posted by allthegobro
Categories: Africa 2024
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By Cheryle Bernard on September 23, 2024 at 8:24 am
Great pictures Russell. yes I remember the story of the Elephant baby and the crocodile at the Limpopo River
By Alan on September 23, 2024 at 8:49 am