. Factory and industrial management. .0per cent., and in 1896 to £ per cent. Then the line passed intothe control of the Orange Free State government. With the pacification of South Africa there is bound to be a tre-mendous accession of trade, traffic, industrial activity. The trafficfrom Cape ports to the Transvaal has demanded some improvementin carrying capacity from the end of the Cape system. In the futurethis demand will be all the more insistent. Of course the first ob-vious remedy is to double the Orange River main line throughout. Butare there not better remedies ? Cannot new t
. Factory and industrial management. .0per cent., and in 1896 to £ per cent. Then the line passed intothe control of the Orange Free State government. With the pacification of South Africa there is bound to be a tre-mendous accession of trade, traffic, industrial activity. The trafficfrom Cape ports to the Transvaal has demanded some improvementin carrying capacity from the end of the Cape system. In the futurethis demand will be all the more insistent. Of course the first ob-vious remedy is to double the Orange River main line throughout. Butare there not better remedies ? Cannot new tracks be opened up withoutgrave disadvantage to the old route? Would it not be wiser to defer thiswidening, and instead make a new line from Klerksdorp to FourteenStreams, 50 miles north of Kimberley on the western section of theCape lines ? As the crow flies the actual distance is about 140 miles, andthe engineering detours which would probably be found necessarvshould not increase this to more than 150 miles. The cost of this new. THE RAILWAY .sTATlDX AT IKETUKIA. construction should not greatly exceed that of doubling nearly 350miles in the Orange River Colony. Besides possessing important mil-itary advantages—and for a while it will certainly be necessary to havean eye to these—this new line would give the shortest route betweenCape Town and Johannesburg. Between these two places is probablythe most valuable through passenger traffic in South Africa. By thisnew line the distance between the two industrial capitals of South Af-rica, Johannesburg and Kimberley, w^ould be reduced to about 300miles. At present a traveller wishing to go from the Rand to the Dia-mond City is obliged to travel due south to Naauwpoort Junction (435 i86 THE ENGINEERING MAGAZINE. miles) then north-west to join the western system at De Aar (85 miles)then north to Kimberley (140 miles). Thus the total distance fromJohannesburg is 660 miles. The republics might set their faces againstrailway develo
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubj, booksubjectengineering
