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hide options panelBulawayo - Dett
11 photos
updated : 2022-08-25
Bulawayo - Dett is the southern section of the long main line to Zambia via Victoria Falls. Traffic was fairly heavy with coal from Wankie and Zambian copper providing much of the traffic. The line was still largely steam worked by the larger 15th and 20th class Garratts until the early 1990s.
Heany Jn - West Nicholson
10 photos
updated : 2020-12-09
The 170km branch from Heany Junction, east of Bulawayo, reached West Nicholson in 1905. The line was built to serve gold mines but most traffic was limestone from Colleen Bawn to a cement works near Bulawayo. In the 1980s 16A Class Garratts worked most trains, with 14As appearing less often.
Almost twenty years of UN sanctions kept steam alive in Rhodesia through the 1960s and 1970s and, by the time the country entered the 1980s as the newly independent Zimbabwe, it still had a fleet of Garratts, over 80 of which were in the process of being refurbished at the ZECO works in Bulawayo.
Steam remained the mainstay of operations on the lines to Victoria Falls and West Nicholson until the early 1990s, making Zimbabwe a prime destination for railway photographers.
