Page 18 - Bulletin 18 2014

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The trolleys ran on a double track, with one trolley coming down with ballast as the other

ascended. The first 550m was horse drawn before reaching a rope tramway that extended for
another 1 000m. At the end of the horse drawn section, carriages were pulled by a steam

winch taken from a ship. (Figs. 1.8 – 1.11.)

An overseer’s cottage was built because of the length of the contract and this stone house is
still to be seen, just past the dam itself. It has been incorporated into one of the camps of the

Hoerikwaggo Mountain Trail.

With the De Villiers dam completed all that remained was the disposal of the works village

and the trolley track. These John offered to both Wynberg and Cape Town Municipalities,

and Cape Town bought the overseer’s house. By this time the trolley track was being referred
to as Delbridge’s Railway and there was a serious proposal that it be used to take day trippers

to the dams. The Town Engineer took a different view and reported that the Railway had
never been designed to carry passengers, that the carts were primitive, the rails uneven and

many sleepers rotten.

There was an account by Rene Juta in her book Cape Peninsula about her ride on the

Delbridge Railway. It was quite hair raising:

“A small black trolley, with planks across the top to serve as seats, slipped
through a clump of gum trees, stopped in the shed and we climbed in….The trolley

was hauled up the one - in - one gradient by a rope worked by steam…. The
mountain seemed to hang over the car, yet the line went straight up… The rope

slackened and I looked back. I understood why Lot’s wife became a pillar of salt;

we had come over the edge of the world….. Twelve minutes of this, then before us
were the sheds… inside, the puffing little engine of magic power.”

With the completion of the De Villiers reservoir the Delbridges focused more of their
attention on the Kalk Bay and Muizenberg area – the so-called Far South. Business

opportunities were drying up in Wynberg and already in the 1890s the Delbridges along with
many other Wynberg businessmen had seen opportunities in the Far South and started to buy

up land and build for their own use and as speculators. To protect and promote their own