Re: Class 25's

Nice shot Michael...where is it...looks to be north of De Aar toward Poupon, although hard to say with the signals that were pretty common. One thing to mention to folks not familiar is these locos had 60 inch drivers, and I remember routinely pacing the daily passenger train at 55 miles an hour. The 16E 4-6-2 and other Pacifics had even higher drivers and could notch 70 or better, which is cruising for 3 foot 6.
One comment on the Class 25's, they sound like Hell! I hated them! More like a whinning jet than a steam engine. Luckily after they were bumped off the Beaufort West-De Aar line, they were de-condensed back to 25NC. We used to call them de-condensors since you could always tell which ones were modified since they had the fans removed from the long tenders. Only one survives in service #3511 and we were lucky enough to catch it on the local and on a special passenger in 1984. As I said they sound awful though!
I still say my best steam trips EVER were the 1977 and 1984 trips to South Africa. That place was like stepping back into the 1950's in the US. At Krankuil a person with us had to use the phone to call the U.S. It was a hand-crank phone!! Incredible.
Greg Scholl