27:05 A small brass plaque is seen, L.D. PORTA, that stands for Livio Dante Porta, the argentine engineer that conceived most of the modifications to the "Red Devil". Sad but true, such a talent on steam technology that arrived late... Greetings from Argentina!
I still watch this great video over and over and over. It is a great clip of Geoff, John and myself during our footplate days. Better still the day it was taken we were on the Red Devil. Sadly my great driver and friend John Gilberthorpe passed away in 2018. He was a true gentleman and I as fireman had great respect for him. The pair of us got on great as a team. Thankfully Geoff is still with us and even after all these years we still cat loads about those great days we had on steam. So hard to believe its now over 30 years ago that steam ended. If it was still on the go then the 3 of us for sure would still be working on it. Thanks for posting, Richard Niven(Adventurescot)
Brilliant commentary ... Richard Attenbro at his best ... hilarious ... having hunted africa for 38 years and traveled behind many of the iron horses i can relate to the whole verbal picture dad was a steam enthusiast and it got passed on in the dna ... thank you ... good memories
From the looks of the haircuts, cameras, cars, etc. I would assume mid- to late-1980s. Per Wikipedia, South African Railways phased out commercial steam almost entirely by 1994-1995 (keyword: almost), and in the documentary they say that steam will be phased out "in 8 years", so that would put the video as 1985 - 1987.
Great video thanks. I and my friends spent many of our holidays at the Witput hotel, chasing the steam locos between Kimberley and De Aar doing much of what is shown in this video.
Thank you for this video! I grew up with steam engines going through our village in the Western Cape. Later I was fortunate to spend some time at the Koedoespoort railway workshops in Pretoria where these magnificent beasts were maintained - from casting steel still made with Bessemer converters, through steam hammers making the giant connecting rods to white metal bearings. I wish I was a film maker in those times! Now I watch your video in Patagonia.
