Rail contract goes for ‘cheap’ $4,500
● Antiquarian book dealer Ronald Levine has sold some rare books in his time, but few will match the handwritten articles of contract for SA’s first town-to-town railway that sold for $4,500 (about R77,898) on auction this week.
“This is such a unique thing,” said Levine. “I don’t think there can be a more important ‘railroadania’ document.”
The contract — 45 pages of calligraphic script on vellum and signed by a Cape government official and the director of the Cape Town Railway & Dock Company on October 5 1858 — marks the first railway deal in SA.
While the auction sparked interest among local historians and rail enthusiasts, the $4,500 reserve price proved too much for most.
“It’s cheap,” said Levine. “It’s one of those things that have no kind of precedent.”
One of the conditions of the sale is that the contract remains in SA.
The only bid, which matched the reserve price, was lodged as the auction went live, said Paul Mills, owner of rare books online auction house Antiquarian Auctions.
Mills said two more people had been watching the auction ahead of its close on Thursday.
“In love and in auctions, everybody’s got a theory on how to do it,” he said.
Other treasures that sold on Thursday were a print by venerated Japanese artist Ichiryusai Hiroshige, which sold for about R36,000, a limited, signed edition of James Walton’s Water-Mills, Windmills and HorseMills of SA, which reached about R1,550, and a 1911 map of Basutoland, published by Britain’s War Office, which went under the hammer for about R3,800.
Under the terms of the railway contract, the Cape Town Railway & Dock Company was to build a 100km-long railway from Cape Town to Wellington, using the British standard gauge of 1,435mm between the rails — the same gauge used by the Gautrain.
The project was to be funded by the Cape government and built by E Pickering.
In what may have been an early example of tenderpreneurship, Pickering took two years to lay just 3km of track.
“One clear flaw in the project lay in the triangular relationship between the Cape government, the entrepreneurial Cape Town Railway & Dock Company and the contractor,” writes historian Kathy Munro in The Heritage Portal.
“It was a small local world of intense professional rivalries.”
Pickering was fired. In revenge, his labourers tore up the track and ran “Wellington”, one of the new locomotives, into a culvert in an attempt to wreck it.
Following a supreme court case, a new contractor was appointed and the rails eventually reached Wellington in 1863.
The auction of such a rare document has caused some ripples in railway circles, with one critic on a local rail enthusiast forum saying it should be in a museum.
The contract has taken a long and winding path from 1858 into private hands.
It had previously been owned by Africana collector Robin Fryde, whose bookshop in downtown Johannesburg, Frank R Thorold’s, attracted buyers looking for rare Africana and legal books from all over the world.
Fryde sold the contract to an unidentified local collector, whose partner was now selling it.
Levine said he had done a “fair amount of spadework”, including approaching Transnet, before listing the contract for sale.
The world of antiquarian trading is full of examples of rare items that should be in museums, he said.
In love and in auctions, everybody’s got a theory on how to do it
Paul Mills
Antiquarian Auctions