Reminiscing about the good old train days

MEMORIES of the golden days of the South African Railways keep coming in from readers who were passengers back in those “Good Old Days”. The railways obviously played a large role in every South African life. Richard Benson sent me a handwritten letter (How rare is that!) from Pinelands, asking whether I remembered the mystery of the Ethel Stone train wrecker.

I did, rather vaguely, but it was good to be reminded.

Back in our boarding school days it was the end of term and a trainload of exuberant boys were getting ready for the joyful journey home from Grahamstown.

In all the excitement one of the boys managed to break the window of one of the compartments.

Obviously this caused shock and anger among the railway staff and the boy’s name was taken down for future punishment.

The wicked window smasher was a lad called Etherstone.

(We had only surnames at boarding school. If there were more than one Smith, they would be Smith Major and Smith Minor. The Williams’s went all the way to Williams Sextus. He was a friend of mine, generally referred to unofficially as Sexy Williams.)

At the start of the next school term the railway police visited every girls’ school in Grahamstown, searching for the notorious Ethel Stone, who was on record as a notorious window smasher.

She was to be charged 30 pounds to pay for the replacement of the train window.

Richard wonders whether the railway police ever solved the baffling mystery of the elusive Ethel Stone.

If you look into the railway police records from the late 1950s you will probably find an unsolved docket relating to the unpaid debt of 30 pounds owed by that naughty young lady.

Of course, such an incident would pass almost unnoticed today, when whole trains are destroyed regularly by angry idiots on a destructive spree.

Ironically, they are probably protesting about the poor train service, I wouldn’t wonder.

I would be quite surprised if today’s railway police, or their modern counterparts, even bother to find a single name to write down and accuse of trainwrecking.

A R30 pane of glass is hardly worth the effort of taking your official notebook and pencil out of your pocket.

I notice, incidentally, that no more trains have used the Simon’s Town line since that triumphant initial trip by steam train last Sunday. Was that a once-off annual event, or did the notorious Ethel Stone manage to destroy a whole train this time?

I hope the lines do not disappear under the sand again before normal service is scheduled to resume.

Last Laugh

The Grade 3 maths teacher was having difficulty drumming basic addition into little Jimmy’s head. “Look, Jimmy, if you found R25 in one of your pockets and R15 in the other pocket, what would you have?”

Jimmy scratched his head for a few moments, then said: “Somebody else’s pants, Miss.”