Железные дороги Южной Африки: История и развитие

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Rail transport in South Africa is an important element of the country's transport infrastructure. All major cities are connected by rail, and South Africa's railway system is the most highly developed in Africa. The South African rail industry is publicly owned.

The first railway was from Cape Town to Wellington and was worked by a small locomotive in 1859. The first passenger carrying service was a small line of about 2 mile (3 km) built by the Natal Railway Company, linking the town of Durban with Harbour Point, opened on 26 June 1860. Cape Town had already started building a 45 mile (72 km) line, track gauge Standard, linking Cape Town to Wellington in 1859 but was hampered by delays and could only begin passenger service to the first section of the line to the Eerste River on 13 February 1862. However, Cape railway construction began a massive expansion after the formation in 1872 of the Cape Government Railways. In the north, in the independent South African Republic, the Netherlands South African Railway Company (NZASM) constructed railways: one from Pretoria to Lourenço Marques in Portuguese East Africa Colony and a shorter line connecting Pretoria to Johannesburg. Later railway development was driven by Cecil Rhodes, whose original intention was for a railway extending across Africa as a great Cape Cairo railway linking all the British territories of Africa. However, Rhodes was as much a capitalist in his motivation as a visionary. When little gold was found in Mashonaland in Southern Rhodesia, he accepted that the scheme to reach Lake Tanganyika had no economic justification. Railways built by private companies without government subsidies need enough traffic to pay high freight rates and recover construction costs. The agricultural products that fuelled much of Rhodesia's early economic growth could not provide this traffic; large quantities of minerals could. Most early railways in Africa were built by the British government rather than by Companies—the need to raise capital and produce dividends prevented most Companies from undertaking such infrastructure investments. However, in the early period of railway construction, BSAC obtained finance from South African companies, including Consolidated Gold Fields and De Beers, in which Rhodes was a dominant force. BSAC also benefited from Rhodes's fortunes before his death. The railway stopped at Mafeking was extended to Bulawayo by October 1897. The first train arrived in Victoria Falls on the Zambesi in 1904, driven by two women. A national "link up" was established in 1898, creating a national transport network. This national network was largely completed by 1910. the vision of Cecil John Rhodes, to have a rail system that would run from the "Cape to Cairo", would never materialise. Upon the merger of four provinces to establish the modern state of South Africa in 1910, the railway lines across the country were also merged. South African Railways and Harbours (SAR & H) was the government agency responsible for, amongst other things, the country's rail system. Electrification of the railways began in the 1920s with the building of the Colenso Power Station for the Glencoe to Pietermaritzburg route, and the introduction of the South African Class 1E. During the 1980s, the transport industry was reorganised. Instead of being a direct government agency, it was modelled along business lines into a government owned corporation called Transnet. Transnet Freight Rail (until recently known as Spoornet) is the division of Transnet that runs the rail system. Though there are no plans to end government ownership of the national rail network, some small portions of the rail system have recently been privatised. During the COVID 19 pandemic in South Africa, the rail system suffered looting.

Two public companies operate freight and commuter services: Transnet Freight Rail and PRASA, respectively. Transnet Freight Rail is the largest division of Transnet, a State Owned Company (SOC) wholly owned by the Government of the Republic of South Africa and the custodian of rail, ports, and pipelines. The commuters' network is divided into urban and long distance routes. Metrorail, the urban commuter transport service present in Gauteng, Western Cape, KwaZulu Natal, and Eastern Cape, is responsible for transporting up to 2 million passengers daily. Shosholoza Meyl used to operate long distance routes covering the major metros in the country: Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London. However, after a train collision killed one person in Horizon View west of Johannesburg on 12 February 2020, the Railway Safety Regulator suspended all Shosholoza Meyl train operations indefinitely. The Blue Train is a luxurious passenger train and a popular tourist attraction for South Africa,

Nearly all railways in South Africa use a 1067 Cape gauge track. This was selected in the 19th century to reduce the cost of building tracks across and through the mountains in several parts of the country.