Loco Fuel and UDI
 

Back in the days of UDI in Rhodesia, there was an embargo on goods and fuel to the country. I will skip the rights and wrongs of UDI and let you know how we ran our diesel locos on a railway that was not supposed to be able to get fuel.
Some of the older members will remember that the Royal Navy was steaming up and down the Mozambique coast stopping any fuel getting into Rhodesia. There were lookouts in the north and the south of the country that spotted the navy and let the tankers know that it was safe to slip into the docks before the navy turned back for the second leg of their patrol. The Portuguese railways then transported the fuel up to the boarder.
We, as railway men were government employees and had signed the secrets act. We took a train down the hill from Umtali to the boarder, a place called Villa De Manica. The train had 2 locos of the DE2 class, which were English Electrics. We would run into the yard and drop the train of copper from Zambia, run around to the fuel point and full up. 1,000 gals in the first loco and the whole of the engine room of the second loco. We would then back onto our train of empties and set off back to Umtali with a bit of fuel that we were not getting as far as the Wilson Gov. was concerned. We also had fuel coming in through South Africa and Portuguese East Africa (Angola). A lot of other goods also came in this way. We had a number of these dummy locos; they even had exhaust coming out of them via a pipe running between the locos. The controls in the dummy loco also worked so that we did not have to run around to get the real loco to the front of the train.

Great story Syd.

Great story Syd, thanks for sharing.

Best wishes for Christmas and 2010.

John H-T.

Wouldn't it be great to see a photo of one of the dummy's ? I bet they went to great lengths to ensure no close up photos were taken though

"Wouldn't it be great to see a photo of one of the dummy's ? I bet they went to great lengths to ensure no close up photos were taken though"

You are right there Pesmo, anyone caught anywhere near the dummy's with a camera would have been charged as a spy. We were at war at the time. Even if we were able to get a photo, the loco would have looked just like any other DE2. That was the whole idea, to fool any of Wilson's spy's.

There cannot be any such thing as a real embargo of freight to any country. Look at Iran and North Korea with the nuclear developments. Someone, somewhere is topping up these regimes and simply naming their price. Governments who think that with treaties and agreements like the UN can police the world's despots are in cloud cuckoo land. Cant say too much here in case THEY are watching!!