CHANGING TRACK: NOT SO FAST

I REFER TO G BUTTON’S “Keep it Local” in your April issue, in which the writer discusses our railway system and local construction of rolling stock.

Union Carriage and Wagon was established in 1957 and was a proudly South African company. For many years, UCW provided traction locomotives as well as quality passenger coaches and other rolling stock. I was involved with UCW one way or another for many years and saw its rise to a respected and trusted manufacturer of rolling stock.

The highlight in UCW’S existence must be when the first of many hundreds of Class 5E1 Series 2 electrical locomotives were delivered to the South African Railways (SAR) in 1964. This was a class-leading locomotive that became the workhorse when freight or passengers needed to be moved. Its signature was the whine made by the resistor bank cooling fans just prior to the locomotive starting to move.

In 1976, UCW secured an order from the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) for 20 Type E100 locomotives. In addition to this, TRA1000 push-pull train sets were manufactured jointly by UCW, Tang Engineering of Taiwan and Hyundai Rotem of South Korea (a long time before we drove their cars).

UCW lost a lot of know-how and suffered large scale brain drain after 1994 as affirmative action became a reality and highly skilled staff upped sticks and went to greener pastures, mostly Australia. I am not up to speed on the current status of UCW and I do not know what capability they have left. The buzz on the ground is that they do not design and manufacture from scratch, but rather assemble imported kits. Very sad.

The 1 067 mm (42 inch) track gauge is a legacy our colonial masters left us and for many years it has served us well. In the previous century, when I was young and my veins were still full of piss and vinegar, I was part of many debates as to the cost implications and feasibility of changing to a wider gauge. Two major projects at the time lent themselves perfectly to using a wider gauge without affecting the balance of the rail network, since both were to be dedicated freight lines: coal and iron ore. The Sishen/saldanha line would have benefited enormously from a wider gauge, since train sets would have been shorter. Economics won the day, since it was 25 per cent cheaper to build a 42-inch line. Many Fridays over a beer there was intense discussion as to what would be the best and the most economic way of converting to a wider gauge. The solution is not as simple as moving the check plates out by 184 mm as made out by Mr Button. Platform clearances, points switching mechanisms, signalling, current tunnel widths and a heck of a lot more come into play.

Sadly, Transnet currently has neither the resources nor the will to keep the current rail infrastructure operational, never mind in good shape. More money and time are spent on pay rises and getting rid of the poor choices made in staffing the operation than what is spent on actually keeping it up and running it as a national asset that one can be proud of. Corruption is a sad fact of life and it is much easier to skim off cream on a contract for the supply of rolling stock than it is to pocket money when it is locally manufactured. (Although I am sure they have found ways around that problem as well.)

UCW was purchased from Murray and Roberts in 2013 by Commuter Transport Engineering.

Don’t hold your breath!