Matjhabeng Railways Heritage Trail.

After the discovery of the richest gold deposits in the world in record, in the area where Johannesburg is built, a massive railways network had to be developed to facilitate the development of the gold mines. To get the supplies to build a fast growing settlements and to accommodate the people.

Fascinating stories of how the “Volks Raad”, the exclusionary Orange River Colony government in the 1890’s had to choose between building the direct line or the Ficksburg-Senekal line as proposed by established groupings of farmers.

The dispute between interest groups about the location of the line forced the matter to be put to the matter to a vote. The direct line option won the day, alas, Virginia Siding was born on the banks of the Sand River!.

This site holds intriguing stories and events, it is the site of the Anglo-Boer war skirmishes and it is also where Queen Elizabeth disembarked the train on the royal tour of South Africa in 1947.

In his book, Ian Hamilton’s March, Winston Churchill chronicles how the British Battalion in their tens of thousands passed through the Sand River Bridge towards Kroonstad and Pretoria in 1900….