Steaming North...

Over a century ago, my Irish grandmother stepped off a Union Castle liner in Cape Town docks, married my grandfather straightaway - despite not having seen her intended husband for 5 years! - and boldly set off by steam train for Cradock, in the semi-desert Karoo. 

Some thirty years later, the heroine of my novel, The Fire Portrait, settles in a fictional Karoo hamlet called Aloe Glen, along the same railway line my grandparents travelled on their way to their new home. Building this railway, back in the 1870s, had been a monumental undertaking. Mountain ranges, desert, lack of water, were some of the challenges facing the engineers attempting to connect Cape Town with the newly-discovered diamond fields of Kimberley and the gold mines of the Witwatersrand.

The greatest problem was the route over the Hex River Mountains. The gradient was 1 in 40, and the line had to accommodate 100m curves. A standard gauge would have been inadequate so a new Cape gauge (3’ 6’’) was developed and is still used throughout Africa.  Even so, such was the steepness of the terrain that special banking engines had to be coupled to the rear of the steam trains to push them up and over the Pass! A 180m tunnel was part of the initial plan. In 1989, a new route was completed which included four tunnels, the longest of which is 13km. This finally eliminated the tortuous grind to the top of the Pass.

That early steam journey must have been a shock to my grandmother, coming from the gentle, green hills of Ireland and encountering stark mountains, dry plains and only the occasional, isolated town... Frances, in The Fire Portrait, feels the same sense of isolation. The railway, though, is the lifeline that keeps Aloe Glen connected to the outside world. But it also takes her husband away to war... 

The train drew into the station on squealing brakes.
Smoke swirled along the platform and I closed my eyes for a moment against the chance of cinders. Julian picked up his bag and climbed aboard. I watched him find a seat by a window. He touched a hand to his lips and mouthed something.
The conductor shouted and waved his flag.
The engine exhaled steam and the train began to move.
He was gone. The platform emptied.
I watched until the rear light disappeared into the veld.