Some snaps from "The Cape Mountaineer II", a railtour in 1992 organised by Derek Phillips and John Middleton of "Steam & Safaris".

The first full day of our tour was on the line south from Bethlehem towards Bloemfontein.

Here our 15F performs for the well known shot at Slabberts shortly after sunrise on a cold winter's day.

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After taking water at Fouriesburg our tour did a series of runpasts some miles to the south.

This view is typical of the area in the middle of wilderness close to the border with Lesotho, and please note this is a best guess at the precise location.

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The 15F performed admirably - too admirably in fact, so that we had problems of fire in the bone dry grassland!

From here we proceeded to Ficksburg for another water stop.

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A view of this beautiful loco taking water.

The final loco of a class totalling 255, 3156 was built by North British of Glasgow in 1947 as their works no. 26040.

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A little south of Ficksburg we stopped at another classic location on the line - again a guess as to precise location.

This was effectively my first full day ever photographing mainline steam, excepting that a few weeks before this tour I had a dismal day chasing Duke of Gloucester out of Paddington as a practice. As a novice it was incredibly helpful to be surrounded by my fellow participants ever willing to offer advice on exposure and composition!

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