SAR 19D 3321 Transfer - Mosselbay to Buffeljagsrivier

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After a very long wait, the time had finally come for 3321 to transfer to her new home at Ceres. During the past few months the locomotive and two others, no 3322 and 19B 1412 had been purchased for use in a private venture in the Ceres Valley.
All three locomotives had spent the last decade at the Voorbaai Depot in Mosselbay. They had been vandalised during their storage and the sea air had certainly done them no favours either! The long road to restoration began immediately with 3321 being the first to undergo a transformation. Luckily with all the necessary equipment at Voorbaai and competent staff the job was successfully completed in very short time.
The story of the move and the chase began at 3:00 am on Friday morning October 16, 2015. I arrived at the depot where the locomotive had already been prepared and was in steam. The crew quickly completed their lubrication duties and with no time to waste they steam the locomotive out of the shed to start the shunt.
After paying a visit to Voorbaais's large wye the locomotive and two Transnet XX wagons were now facing the right way for departure. The train only consisted of the XX wagons which would serve as additional water reserves, DJ drop side wagon and a dinning car once used on the Union Limited.
With departure time approaching the crew then discovered that the headlight wasn't working ... This took a fair amount of time to repair delaying the train by an hour, but soon we were back in business. The train backed up out of the Loco Depot and into the Voorbaai yard where with the points correctly set she took to the open road.
Myself and a few others immediately set chase setting up our camera gear at the level crossing near PetroSA. The wait became unbearable and soon the cellphone call that we all had been dreading came ... the locomotive was steaming poorly and had run out of steam. The crew had attempted to clean the blocked fuel strainer line side, but it was soon apparent that the burner was defective as well. With few options left they returned to Voorbaai so that the problem could be properly addressed in the workshop.
Needless to say many people were disappointed, but these things happen and we were hopeful the repairs wouldn't take long and they didn't! The Voorbaai shed crew wasted no time in getting the problem diagnosed and repaired. They ultimately changed out the burner and fuel strainer a somewhat difficult task as the locomotive was now hot.
I returned to the shed 13:30 by which time the locomotive was already back in steam and had moved under her own power. The authorities decided to let us attempt the trip again the following day using the same time schedule, but one day on.
For me unfortunately this meant I wouldn't be able to do the entire trip as I had to work on Sunday, but it was still a weekend I won't forget any time soon! I apologise for some of the shaky camera work, but I was operating two cameras and only had one tripod... Enjoy!