Any news on this?

I am also wondering if there is anyone at that auction who could make purchases from the scrappers to buy the patent steam loco parts, such as: Lights, valves, safeties, whistles, couplers, tenders and tender trucks, etc.

Even if those SAR locos get condemned to be cut up, they still need to be stripped of all their usable common parts.


I still need a set of Okadee smoke is door hinges, a few couplers, whistles, valves, many parts that all come from those SAR steamers. I wonder to whom I should locate to speak with about those parts and pieces.

You were beaten to it years (if not decades) ago by scrap vultures. Trust me when I say that IF it was a part with any value (either reuse or scrap) and it could be removed by a person or two, it was--be it by preservationists stashing parts or by the vultures hacking and carting off anything brass, copper, etc. At least a couple of the locos had been reduced, over time, to mere shells.

There were two 15F locomotives that I recall were somewhat complete, and I was tentatively informed that those two had been acquired privately for some form of preservation or another.

Further, having personally dealt with the issues of attempting to ship pallet-loads of items to and from South Africa, I would MOST STRONGLY discourage any such travails other than dead-serious commercial transactions. This is not for the faint of heart. South Africa may be part of the modern world, but its "official" business, like much of Africa's, remain a cesspool of politics, tribalism, corruption, and "tributes." I have been trying, unsuccessfully for several years now, to get a small freight shipment of donated historical items delivered to a charitable operation over there, and the recipients have thus far been unable to convince national bureaucrats that they don't have to pay an incredibly expensive import duty on them, no matter how many letters I provide with proof that we rescued them from being "recycled" because they have utterly NO market value in the States............

Having said that, my sources indicate that there remains one last smaller group of steam locos waiting for "disposal," probably via a similar auction, along with possibly the unsold relics from the last auction, "and that will be it for the SAR steam locos!" not in active preservation.

3407 and 3163 sold to New Zealanders

1788 sold to an Australian

This is 3417 today