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Sandstone Estates
Sandstone Estates (Pty) Ltd is a large commercial agricultural enterprise covering over , located on the border with Lesotho in South Africa's Eastern Free State province, close to the Maluti Mountains. The nearest town is Ficksburg, away on the R26. It is a hub of transport preservation. History The farm was built up by the Wille family from the 1830s, who were originally German missionaries. Today it is part of an international agri-business that produces wheat, soya beans, maize and sunflowers. It has been 100% organic since 2005. As steam enthusiasts, in the mid-1990s, the Sandstone owners were approached by Alan Clarke of Transnet Heritage Foundation, who realised the foundation did not have the resources to rescue the collapsing Midmar Museum in KwaZulu-Natal. The collection formed the basis of what became the Sandstone Heritage collection. Today, the main collection is still based around the railway transport of Southern Africa, but also covers an extensive global roa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lesotho
Lesotho ( ), officially the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a country landlocked as an enclave in South Africa. It is situated in the Maloti Mountains and contains the highest mountains in Southern Africa. It has an area of over and has a population of about million. It was previously the British Crown colony of Basutoland, which declared independence from the United Kingdom on 4 October 1966. It is a fully sovereign state and is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the African Union, and the Southern African Development Community. The name ''Lesotho'' roughly translates to "land of the Sotho". History Basutoland Basutoland emerged as a single polity under King Moshoeshoe I in 1822. Moshoeshoe, a son of Mokhachane, a minor chief of the Bakoteli lineage, formed his own clan and became a chief around 1804. Between 1820 and 1823, he and his followers settled at the Butha-Buthe Mountain, joining with former adversaries in resistance against the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bethlehem, Free State
Bethlehem is a town in the eastern Free State province of South Africa that is situated on the Liebenbergs river (also called Liebenbergs Vlei) along a fertile valley just north of the Rooiberg Mountains on the N5 road. It is the fastest growing town in the Free state province, with its target of being the third largest city after Bloemfontein and Welkom. It is a wheat growing area and named after the biblical Bethlehem, from he, בֵּית לֶחֶם ("Beit Lechem"), meaning "house of bread". The town lies at an altitude of and this contributes to its cool climate with frosty winters and mild summers. The average annual temperature is around . Bethlehem is situated approximately north-east of Bloemfontein, east of Kroonstad and west of Harrismith. The town is strategically situated in the heart of the picturesque north-eastern Free State and originally developed as a service centre. Bethlehem is the seat of the Dihlabeng Local Municipality (this municipality is situat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transport In The Free State (province)
Transport (in British English), or transportation (in American English), is the intentional movement of humans, animals, and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, land (rail and road), water, cable, pipeline, and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles, and operations. Transport enables human trade, which is essential for the development of civilizations. Transport infrastructure consists of both fixed installations, including roads, railways, airways, waterways, canals, and pipelines, and terminals such as airports, railway stations, bus stations, warehouses, trucking terminals, refueling depots (including fueling docks and fuel stations), and seaports. Terminals may be used both for interchange of passengers and cargo and for maintenance. Means of transport are any of the different kinds of transport facilities used to carry people or cargo. They may include vehicles, riding animals, and pack animals. Vehicles may in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Museums In The Free State (province)
A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these items available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. The largest museums are located in major cities throughout the world, while thousands of local museums exist in smaller cities, towns, and rural areas. Museums have varying aims, ranging from the conservation and documentation of their collection, serving researchers and specialists, to catering to the general public. The goal of serving researchers is not only scientific, but intended to serve the general public. There are many types of museums, including art museums, natural history museums, science museums, war museums, and children's museums. According to the International Council of Museums (ICOM), there are more than 55,000 museums in 202 countrie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2 Ft Gauge Railways In South Africa
In the early 1900s, narrow-gauge railway lines started playing a significant role in South Africa. They facilitated the transport of various agricultural and mineral produce from locations hardly accessible by road. They therefore enabled many communities to become prosperous. These lines featured the largest and most powerful locomotives ever in existence on two-foot-gauge railways worldwide. All two-foot railways were operated isolated from each other. However, this did not prevent standardization and interchangeability of rolling stock and locomotives. The larger railway lines operated their own workshops performing minor to major maintenance and/or repairs. For the purpose of major overhauls and interchangeability, rolling stock could be transported piggyback on Cape gauge rolling stock by means of a special access ramp on the break of gauge at Cape gauge junctions available on most of the two-foot lines. Their decline started in the 1980s, the last commercial line ceas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Railway Museums In South Africa
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a prepared flat surface, rail vehicles (rolling stock) are directionally guided by the tracks on which they run. Tracks usually consist of steel rails, installed on sleepers (ties) set in ballast, on which the rolling stock, usually fitted with metal wheels, moves. Other variations are also possible, such as "slab track", in which the rails are fastened to a concrete foundation resting on a prepared subsurface. Rolling stock in a rail transport system generally encounters lower frictional resistance than rubber-tyred road vehicles, so passenger and freight cars (carriages and wagons) can be coupled into longer trains. The operation is carried out by a railway company, providing transport between train stations or freight customer facilit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Military And War Museums In South Africa
A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct military uniform. It may consist of one or more military branches such as an army, navy, air force, space force, marines, or coast guard. The main task of the military is usually defined as defence of the state and its interests against external armed threats. In broad usage, the terms ''armed forces'' and ''military'' are often treated as synonymous, although in technical usage a distinction is sometimes made in which a country's armed forces may include both its military and other paramilitary forces. There are various forms of irregular military forces, not belonging to a recognized state; though they share many attributes with regular military forces, they are less often referred to as simply ''military''. A nation's military may ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Farms In South Africa
A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used for specialized units such as arable farms, vegetable farms, fruit farms, dairy, pig and poultry farms, and land used for the production of natural fiber, biofuel and other commodities. It includes ranches, feedlots, orchards, plantations and estates, smallholdings and hobby farms, and includes the farmhouse and agricultural buildings as well as the land. In modern times the term has been extended so as to include such industrial operations as wind farms and fish farms, both of which can operate on land or sea. There are about 570 million farms in the world, most of which are small and family-operated. Small farms with a land area of fewer than 2 hectares operate about 1% of the world's agricultural land, and family farms comprise about 7 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Two Foot Gauge Railways In South Africa
In the early 1900s, narrow-gauge railway lines started playing a significant role in South Africa. They facilitated the transport of various agricultural and mineral produce from locations hardly accessible by road. They therefore enabled many communities to become prosperous. These lines featured the largest and most powerful locomotives ever in existence on two-foot-gauge railways worldwide. All two-foot railways were operated isolated from each other. However, this did not prevent standardization and interchangeability of rolling stock and locomotives. The larger railway lines operated their own workshops performing minor to major maintenance and/or repairs. For the purpose of major overhauls and interchangeability, rolling stock could be transported piggyback on Cape gauge rolling stock by means of a special access ramp on the break of gauge at Cape gauge junctions available on most of the two-foot lines. Their decline started in the 1980s, the last commercial lin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Welsh Highland Railway
The Welsh Highland Railway (WHR) or Rheilffordd Eryri is a long, restored narrow gauge heritage railway in the Welsh county of Gwynedd, operating from Caernarfon to Porthmadog, and passing through a number of popular tourist destinations including Beddgelert and the Aberglaslyn Pass. At Porthmadog it connects with the Ffestiniog Railway and to the short Welsh Highland Heritage Railway. In Porthmadog it uses the United Kingdom's only mixed gauge flat rail crossing. The restoration, which had the civil engineering mainly built by contractors and the track mainly built by volunteers, received a number of awards. Originally running from , near Caernarfon, to ,Boyd (1972), pages=283 the current line includes an additional section from Dinas to Caernarfon. The original line also had a branch to and the slate quarries around Moel Tryfan, which has not been restored. (This branch forms a footpath "rail trail", the lower section of which has been resurfaced and supplied with her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avontuur Railway
The Avontuur Railway is a closed railway line between Port Elizabeth and the town of Avontuur in the Western and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa. It is the longest narrow gauge route in the world at a length of . "Avontuur" is the Afrikaans and Dutch word for "adventure". History The railway was built by the government of the Cape Colony between 1890 and 1906, to connect the Langkloof fruit growing industry with the new port at Port Elizabeth. The section of line between Humewood Road and Humansdorp was opened for public traffic on 1 November 1905. In 1903 a request was laid before the then government in order to add a branch line to Patensie. This branch was commissioned on 3 April 1914. In 1906 a branch line was opened to the Port Elizabeth's suburb Walmer and in 1928 a twelve mile long private branch was constructed to the Eastern Province Cement Company (EPCC). Passenger traffic Scheduled trains Scheduled passenger trains were discontinued in the 1940s, al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred County Railway
Alfred County Railway is an abandoned narrow gauge railway in South Africa, which runs from the southern transport hub of Port Shepstone on the Indian Ocean, via Izotsha and Paddock for to Harding, KwaZulu-Natal. Background South Africa, rich in natural resources and fertile lands, has many areas that are ideal for agricultural production. However, the steep mountainous terrain between the resource rich areas in the high veld and the coastal ports presented a transport challenge. Before well maintained and reliable access roads had been developed, narrow gauge railways were used extensively by South African farmers to move produce from their large farms to central sorting and packing points on their own land. As a result, entrepreneurial business people created linking railways to transport the produce from the sorting and packing points to the coastal ports. Their choice of gauge was determined by the gauge that was being used in each local area and varied between the ea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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