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.