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I grew up in Touws River in the Karoo as a Railways child and then spent my career serving in the South African Air Force from March 1967 to April 1999. I retired to Bloubergrant in Cape Town and as pensioner I now keep myself occupied photographing locomotives and modelling trains. In addition I create and contribute to articles here on Wikipedia, mainly about South African locomotives and South African military decorations and medals.
In August 2010 I took some pictures of the then newly commissioned Class 15E electric locomotive at Saldanha. In an attempt to find some information about these locomotives, I tried Google and found virtually nothing. One thing led to another and I finally found some entries on South African locomotives on Wikipedia.
There were only five articles in total. So I added a few lines to the Class 26 stub article and started an article consisting of a few lines and a picture on the new Class 15E. Then I forgot to stop. More than three years later, by mid-2014, I was "done-ish". Lower down follows a list of links to articles which I started and those (with gray shaded dates) which I gave a major overhaul.
I received heaps of feedback and additional information from people like Peter Bagshawe, Gary Barnes, Malcolm Bates, Franciscus Boshoff, Piet Conradie, Rollo Dickson, the late Philmar du Plessis, John Faulkner, Dave Fortune, the late Phil Girdlestone (father of the Red Dragon), Jaco Holtzhausen, the late Eric Kirkland, the late Faan Koekemoer (on the 6E1-18E loco numbers and rebuild dates), Gerhard Lesch (father of the Slimkabel), Grant Leslie, Robert Maidment-Wilson, Bruno Martin, Aidan McCarthy, Peter Micenko, John Middleton, Richard Niven, Derick Norton, Leith Paxton, Les Pivnic, Peter Sinclair, Trevor Staats, Piotr Staszewski (who shared some of his collection of builders works number lists), Pierre Strydom, Colin Summersgill, Carlos Vieira, Noel Welch and probably several others who I forgot to mention.
I also received additional information from Dr. Raimund Loubser, Dr. M.M. Loubser's son, on his father's work on the design of the Class 19 and his own involvement with the Class 25 while he was working at the CSIR. With the pre-Union locomotives, I was peppered with streams of invaluable information from, most notably, John Middleton, Leith Paxton, Bruno Martin and Peter Bagshawe, some of which turned what was "known" to date about some of the older locomotives on its head.
For the modern locomotives I could use mostly my own pictures, but pictures of older locomotives were often a problem to find. In the end I received pictures to use from literally all over the world, and every locomotive bar five could be illustrated with at least one photograph.
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My heartfelt thanks for sharing pictures go to Bob Adams, Eugene Armer, Peter Bagshawe, Charles Baker, John Batwell, Malcolm Best, Martin Drescher, Len du Preez, Jean Dulez, John Faulkner, Ryan Fincham, the late Phil Girdlestone, J. Stuart Grossert, Georg Hettasch, Hennie Heymans, Bob Hogan, Luca Lategan, Sue Lawrence, Robert Maidment-Wilson, Jacobus Marais, John Middleton, Dennis Mitchell, Nico Moolman, Dewald Nel, Richard Niven, Hannes Paling, Leith Paxton, Ian Roberts, Terry Rowe, Gary Ruddy, Jezmundo Smith, Les Smith, Trevor Staats, Anthony Stanton, Logan Stone, Hans Sturgeon, Lourens Sturgeon, Hilton Teper, Chris van Wyk and Derek Walker. My apologies to the people I may have omitted.
Most thanks must go to the late members of the 1930s Railway Group, people like Arthur Arnold, A. Butchard, S.H. (Silvy) Carter, Frank Garrison, D.F. (Frank) Holland, Dr. Eric Manken, A. Spence and others, who left us a rich heritage of some incredible old photographs which were made available from the collections of Pierre de Wet, Richard Gillatt, Leith Paxton, Ian Pretorius, Les Pivnic and others.
Thanks to my wife Maggie, who is fortunately also a railfan and who still has to endure my getting to bed at 04:00.
The following is a list of articles which I started from scratch and those (with gray shaded dates) which I expanded upon, excluding those where I just poked my nose in briefly. While I actually created the list to help me keep track of articles which may be due for the occasional revision, others may find it useful as well. Clicking the "1st run" column's sort button will sort locomotive articles according to the years the locomotives first entered service, and decorations and medals articles in their South African order of wear.