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In 1894 the railway line between Pretoria and Lourenco Marques was finally completed and the transport drivers went out of business. The new railway line climbed the escarpment by way of Komatipoort, Kaapmuiden, Nelspruit and Machadorp, with a rack rail to assist the locomotives on the steepest gradient of all between Waterval Onder and Waterval Bo. Once that section of the line had been built it was fairly plain sailing to build on to meet and join the Highveld section, built from Pretoria towards Middleburg.
At the same time there were rumours of new gold discoveries on the banks of the Selati River and it seemed that it might be possible to run a line that would branch out from the main line at Komatipoort and serve the new gold field that was expected to bring men and machinery to the plain across which flowed the Olifants river, the Great Letaba River, the Selati River and other streams, all destined to feed the Limpopo.
Today this idea seems to have been a crazy plan, with the white population in the area numbering less than 1000, but it must be remembered that prospectors, talking big, had declared that the Selati River gold field might rival the mines of the Witwatersrand, the just being developed.
This optimism led to the grant of a concession to build a railway to a group of members of the old Volksraad. There was one important stipulation that the concessionaires had to accept in finding the capital and the know-how to build this track. It was a condition of the granting of the concession that the promoters were not to call for British capital or to sell any part of their concession to a British company. Presumably the President and the Executive had decided that there was far too much British capital already employed in the Republic.
After it became known that the concession was to be granted, Baron Eugene Oppenheim, aged 22, together with his brother, the Baron Robert Openheim, was prepared to pay R160 000 for the concession, a price at which the concessionaires were only too pleased to sell.
The brothers were French, but they proposed to establish the head office of the new railway company in Belgium. Consequently the company was floated under the imposing title “La Compagaine Franco-Belge du Chemin-de-fer du Noord de la Republique Sud-Africaine” (The Franco Belgium Railway Company of the Northern Territories of the South African Republic).
This name would however be the only impressive feature of the company. It built 80 km of track from Komatipoort to the Sabie River (at the point where the Skukuza camp of the Kruger Park is today) and then came to a halt. All its funds had vanished and the Barons Openheim faced arrest.
However the contractors had done their job thoroughly. The line they laid ran through the Sabi Reserve and was stoutly built. The Kruger Park grew up around it but survived and 17 years later the Government of the Union of South Africa at long last took the line through to Soekmekaar where it joined a line from Messina that carried the Messina Copper Mine’s production to Lourenco Marques.
This line began by being important to the Messina Company but it being of the utmost importance to the Lowveld. The building of the line, and the join-up with the main railway line to Pietersburg, was the greatest event in the history of the Lowveld to that date. It added what was almost a fifth province to the Union of South Africa for it brought into full production a vast new agricultural area. Before the railway arrived it took about four days to get fruit and vegetables over the Drakensberg. The railway decreased this time to an overnight journey which lands fresh produce in the Johannesburg market in perfect condition.
This branch railway line through the heart of the Lowveld was of importance not only to the fresh produce markets of the cities but also to the scattered settlement below the Berg. In 1912 there were not many motor vehicles on the road and of those that were in use there were few that had sufficient power to climb up the roads that led over the great wall of the Drakensberg.
The new railway line made farming in the Lowveld a viable occupation and encouraged settlers. After World War I the Government opened up areas of Crown land and offered it to ex-servicemen. Up to the time there had only been three recognized methods of earning a living in the Lowveld – hunting, transport riding and fossicking for gold. Now farming, which included the growing of citrus and sub-tropical fruits, and the rearing of beef cattle, began and timber was planted on the slopes of the Drakensberg. The process of ‘taming’ the Lowveld environment had begun.
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