[DSY011]

"You certainly had to know your stuff working for Rhodesia Railways, what with derailments and lions and other wildlife roaming about eh Syd".

This is true Locojoe, but then we did not have to know all the routes and station layouts that the British crews had to know. The two largest stations in Rhodesia were Bulawayo and Salisbury. Salisbury only had 3 platforms and Bulawayo had 4. The only double line working was between the two cities, all the rest were single line. All of the signals were C.T.C color light working apart from the line through Botswana which had semaphore but for a long time that line was crewed by South Africans. On the main line from Bulawayo through Sawmills, Dett, Thompson Junction and Victoria falls and into Zambia, there was only one train every two hours. In the evening there was a mixed goods/passenger and one Mail (express passenger) train that ran over night. (Express passengers also carried mail and were timed at 45mph)
So as you can see we did not have as much to worry about as the British crews did. In all my time on the R.R. I never had to re-rail anything. We did however have to isolate the front end of a 15th Class Garratt once when I was still a fireman.