JC: Back in our schooldays, the train left Bloem toward midnight. So Colesberg came in the small hours. I used to try to keep awake. Sometimes I was still sitting on the coach end balcony in the night air, all the way to Colesberg, but I always flaked after Arundel siding. I think I am looking over the koppies to about where Arundel siding is.

MO: Your direction is spot on. What are you thinking?

JC: That … it is part of a courier business waiting to happen.

MO: Your brain is mashing rail things up - again?

JC: Guilty as charged, sir.

MO: [sighs] - now … what?

JC: Well, we are looking at a wonky rombus.

MO: You have truly lost me.

JC: You get Kimberley to Bloem at the top, de Aar to Noupoort at the bottom, and the two sides are Kimberley to de Aar, and Noupoort to Bloemfontain. A romboid roughly 150 km with by 300 high.

MO: So what?

JC: That area encloses an area within which battery electric vehicles can serve and reach about 75 km all around it too.

MO: I confess I can’t see a revival of general rail of any kind on these old tracks.

JC: It is not obvious. If one considers a few things, though, it becomes clearer.

MO: What things?

JC: For a start, these track sections are in good condition. Transnet is farming out concessions, looking for operators. Diesel just went up drastically.

MO: I saw that.

JC: SA oil men discarded refining after fires and floods in eThekwini. They will use any excuse - but Karoo farmers have always adapted - they became cattle farmers in a single generation. They will move to produce electricity. Even partial shade from panels will dry out grass slower than baking Karoo sunshine normally does, so grazing patterns will change, and drip irrigation under panels is a thing now.

MO: You may be right about electricity farming. But what about farms that are nowhere near the grid?

JC: They can forget about selling to Eskom. There is zero allocation avaiable in the Northern Cape, and they need to build more grid. But a rail concession deal that includes strips of solar panels on land adjoining sidings can generate enough to run courier networks and there is money to be made from allowed wheeling power to existing municipalities.

MO: How will the courier network compete?

JC: It will out-perform hugely on price, and perform as quickly.

MO: How so?

JC: By re-designing wayside goods service. Forget huge locomotives pulling dead weights. Instead, flatbed container wagons will be battery powered, software controlled, more like ride-hailers. They can shunt themselves into larger trains where necessary. The typical train will be tri-purpose: freight, parcels, passengers.

MO: I don’t see it.

JC: Picture three wagons, one each straddling a power car in the middle with modest passenger accommodation, hosted by a loadmaster. Passengers always alight mid-station, not at platform ends, for a long walk. Wagons will have underfloor batteries powering electric traction motors. Nothing will be more than four hours away. Four hours out, lunch, four hours back. Standard shift. HR will be happy.

MO: Go on?

JC: Everything on either side of rail will be within range of an EV vehicle recharging mostly from the sun. A three-wagon train can recharge in five minutes. It can do that while waiting in a siding to cross an oncoming train. All the stations from Colesberg to Noupoort have very long siding interloops designed to accommodate long trains. So there is no infrastructure other than transponders to put in place. GPS and radio are replacing copper. “Nothing to steal here”.

MO: Hmmmm. It was not stealing. It was a development model! Retail empowerment! Transnet provides free copper for harvest and resale.

[both laugh]

JC: In the old days, post was chucked in a bag & collected by someone who did not even know if there was any to collect. Now, all mail is actually registered. We know today whether there is mail for collection in at a small place like Nelspoort. Book a parcel, (dialing *125#PARCEL) and the app knows to deliver.

MO: [Whistles] “I’m beginning to see the light.”

JC: Battery electric vehicles will be ’last mile’. They can be in dorps up to 75km from the stations: 2 hours out, 2 hours return. Parcel from Gqeberha to Britstown, ovenight, delivered by lunchtime.

MO: It may just work.

JC: Replicating in the other closed loops around SA, (they make a honeycomb of working track loops), will cover most of the country, and may rescue the Post Office and PRASA main line. Not a bad double whammy?