Narrow Gauge Railways of South Africa - Apple Express Part 2
When engineers first contemplated the building of a railway here, they were confronted with a land broken by rivers, mountains and precipitous gorges.
To serve the whole agricultural district effectively, the railway would need to extend from Port Elizabeth, through the entire length of the Longkloof, to Avontuur, a distance of 284 kilometers. In such terrain, it was going to cost a fortune.
In 1898 a survey put the estimated cost of such a railway, built to South Africa’s standard gauge of three-foot-six-inches, at over six thousand pounds per mile. However, engineers claimed that the cost would be reduced to only a third of that by placing the rails just twenty-four inches apart.
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