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Pietermaritzburg station back in action but train service not up to scratch

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Pietermaritzburg station back in action but train service not up to scratch:

The Shosholoza Meyl had its first two trips between Johannesburg and Durban this past weekend, stopping at Pietermaritzburg for the first time since 2021.

  • The Pietermaritzburg station recently reopened its passenger service after closing in 2021.
  • The Shosholoza Meyl had its first two trips between Johannesburg and Durban since then, stopping at the station, this past weekend.
  • But the trip faced several issues and was delayed by ten hours.

Pietermaritzburg railway station recently resumed its passenger rail service for the first time since its closure in 2021. Before its closure, the station served 6,000 passengers monthly.

The Shosholoza Meyl resumed its route between Johannesburg and Durban this past weekend, with stops at Pietermaritzburg, Germiston, Standerton, Modern Castle and Ladysmith. The train will operate on a weekly basis during the peak time of December, said Makanda. Off season, it will only dash once a month.

On Saturday it travelled from Johannesburg and on Sunday returned to Johannesburg.

Passenger services had been suspended due to high levels of vandalism and theft that rendered the station and the railway lines unusable. Theft of copper cabling and signalling infrastructure remains a problem, said Andiswa Makanda, spokesperson for the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA).

There is no date set for services to resume between Pietermaritzburg and other destinations in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). There is currently no way to travel between Pietermaritzburg and Durban by train as the Saturday Shosholoz Meyl heading to Durban is a drop-off service only and on its way back it only picks up passengers for Johannesburg. The cost is a flat rate of R170 in economy class and R360 in tourist class regardless of where one boards or alights.

Troubled start

Shosholoza Meyl trains are fragment of PRASA’s long-distance passenger service for inter-provincial travel.

The train departed Johannesburg at 6:30pm on Friday and was scheduled to arrive in Pietermaritzburg at 6am on Saturday, but only arrived at 4pm on Saturday, almost ten hours tardy.

The delay was caused by the train having to significantly reduce its speed to avoid derailment due to the needy condition of the tracks which maintain deteriorated because of a lack of maintenance, said Makanda.

A goods train which failed outside Pietermaritzburg also blocked the route.

Zimele Duma, a passenger, said how displeased he was at the lengthy delay. His kids had had to wait every day for him at the cab rank.

Duma complained about the lack of communication from train staff and said the journey was not worth the cost.

“The train used to be better, now it’s worse,” he said.

The Pietermaritzburg station was recently refurbished after years of vandalism. The roof was repaired but in recent heavy rains it was leaking.

A team was dispatched this morning to assess whether there has been any damage to the roof, said Makanda.

Since last year, PRASA KZN has reopened four operational corridors for its metro line including Umlazi, KwaMashu, South Coast and Cato Ridge.

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Top Star Drive-In: The Cinema on the Mountain of Gold

The Ferreira Dump began growing in the late 1800s, composed of the crushed rock and chemical residue left over after early, inefficient mining processes had extracted as much gold as the technology of the time allowed. By the 1960s, it was a flat-topped, man-made mesa overlooking the city. In a stroke of entrepreneurial genius, the surface was tarred and the Top Star Drive-In was opened. It quickly became a South African institution. Its appeal was not just the movies, but the unparalleled view: as the sun set, the massive white screen would flicker to life against a backdrop of the glowing skyscrapers of the Central Business District, separated from the viewer only by the elevated M2 highway.

In the decades before television arrived in South Africa (1976), the Top Star was a primary social hub. It was a democratic space in an undemocratic time; while the city below was strictly segregated, the “car” served as a private bubble that allowed a degree of social freedom not found in traditional theaters. For many Johannesburgers, the Top Star was a site of nostalgic rites of passage—first dates, family outings where children were piled into the back of station wagons with blankets and flasks of tea, and the Saturday “car market” where the parking lot transformed into a sprawling hub for buying and selling second-hand vehicles.