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 The
first commercially successful steam engine was a stationary pumping
engine built in 1698 by Thomas Savery (Fig. 1).
Development was steady until James Watt
in 1763 produced the independent condenser, and later a number of other
devices, which made the stationary steam engine a really useful machine.
While earlier attempts to construct steam road carriages had been made,
the first locomotive to run on rails was built in 1802 by Richard Trevithick
in Cornwall, England. In 1804 he built an improved locomotive, which
hauled coal wagons on the Merthyr Tydvil Railway in South Wales, which
is believed to be the oldest steam worked railway in the world.
 From
then on development of the steam locomotive was very rapid, until in
1829 George Stephenson and his son Robert built the famous locomotive
"The Rocket" (Fig. 2), which won a £500 prize offered by the Liverpool
and Manchester Railway, in England.
The "Rocket" was fitted with a multi-tubular boiler, a water jacketed
firebox, a smokebox, and had two outside cylinders coupled to a single
pair of driving wheels. The exhaust steam from the cylinders was
lead to a blast pipe in the smokebox to produce the necessary draught.
The basic principles of the steam locomotive as used today were thus
laid down in 1829. Except for developments in detail and in size, no
fundamental changes have been made since then.
In South Africa a short railway was opened in June 1860, from the Point
Docks to Durban, and in May 1861, the first portion of the railway from
Cape Town to Wellington was opened. From then on railway development
was very rapid throughout the country. The
month of May 1910 saw the Cape, Natal and the Transvaal Government Railways,
as well as the Ports of those provinces all combine to form South African
Railways and Harbours (SAR&H). On the 1st April 1990, Transnet was formed,
and the South African Railways became
,
a major division of
.
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