Page 30 - Bulletin 1 1997

27

THE STORY OF THE RAILWAY LINE
FROM MUIZENBERG TO SIMON’S TOWN

David Rhind

The construction of the line from Cape Town to Muizenberg

The line from Cape Town to Simon’s Town opened in four stages. The first section was from

Cape Town to Wynberg and that opened in December 1864. There had been a lot of argument

between the Wynberg Railway Company and the Cape Town Railway and Dock Company which
owned the line from Cape Town to Wellington. The Wynberg Company's line actually started

from Salt River and the argument was about whether or not the Wynberg Company's trains could

use the Cape Town Railway and Dock Company's line from there to Cape Town.

The argument caused a lot of delay and in the meantime the Wynberg Company ran out of money

and in the end it had to lease its line to the Cape Town Railway and Dock Company, which
operated both lines until they were bought by the Cape Government in 1873.

These lines had been built to take the 4ft 8.5ins gauge, but to lessen the cost of extending the
railway through the Hex River Mountains the Government decided to reduce gauge to 3ft 6ins,

and so in 1882 when the line to Wynberg was doubled the gauge was, at the same time, also

reduced to 3ft 6ins.

Another problem the Wynberg Company had had to face was obtaining permission from the

Admiralty in London for the line to cross the road to the Observatory. At that time the
Observatory belonged to the Royal Navy, as did the road leading to it, and it exercised

prescriptive rights by posting sentries on the road once a year to remind everybody that traffic

used it only with its permission. The Admiralty agreed to the railway crossing the road on
condition that all trains stopped there and the line was fenced and gated. Thus the station came to

be known as Observatory Road until 1921 when the Railways bowed to what had become

common usage over the years and changed its name to “Observatory”.