Terry Hutson
THERE WERE headaches aplenty in store for Gauteng-based Leselo Trading following the shipment of the second of a four-locomotive order to Sudan, after Spoornet contrived to 'lose' the 70-ton ex-TransNamib engine several times along the way.
Perhaps 'lose' is too strong a word to describe things, but to Leselo's Chris McLaughlin and Johan Groenewald it must have seemed that way, particularly since their earlier export had gone off smoothly.
Leselo holds a contract to supply four of the locos for a private buyer in the Sudan who will operate them in the Sudan. The logistics required Spoornet to haul the locos one at a time from the Namibian border to Durban, where they would be loaded on board Metall und Rohstoff (MUR) vessels calling at Port Sudan.
Things started going wrong when loco No.2 reached Kimberley where Spoornet, for reasons best known to themselves, took the loco off the Durban train. By this time the ship, m.v Lia, was completing loading cargo in Durban and faced sailing without the cargo or a 36-hour delay at some US$10 000 per day. It required frantic calls to Spoornet's head office in Johannesburg before the loco got moving again.
This time it got as far as Cato Ridge, where again the train was stopped - according to reports because the crew had completed its allotted number of hours and would go no further. Once again the hot line to head office was employed.
Eventually two senior Spoornet drivers from Durban's Wentworth Diesel Depot drove to Cato Ridge to bring the TransNamib diesel on its final few kilometres, only to discover on arrival in Cato Ridge that the train's brake pipes were now missing. Fortunately they had experience of these matters and discovered the missing pipes in nearby bushes. These were soon refitted and the train was on its way once again. It arrived in the port just in time to beat the master's decree of not loading such heavy cargo after dark, leaving ship's agents Polaris Shipping, broker Alan Steveni of Balmada Shipping, and the two Leselo partners to breathe a collective sigh of relief.
According to McLaughlin the next two locos will arrive in Durban at the end of July - hopefully without the same drama, he said.
On track... the ex-TransNamib loco is lifted aboard the Lia on its way to the Sudan
