1.
Hudswell Clarke
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Hudswell, Clarke and Company Limited was an engineering and locomotive building company in Jack Lane, Hunslet, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. The company was founded as Hudswell and Clarke in 1860, in 1870 the name was changed to Hudswell, Clarke and Rogers. There was another change in 1881 to Hudswell, Clarke and Company, the firm became a limited company in 1899. In 1862, soon after the company had formed, they were given the initial design work on William Hamond Bartholomews compartment boats for the Aire. They produced at least one of the prototype Tom Pudding compartments, the locomotive part of the business is now part of the Hunslet Engine Company. Locomotive-building was always only one part of a product inventory that included underground diesel-powered mining locomotives, hydraulic pit-props. In 1911 Hudswell Clarke entered into an agreement with Robert Hudson for the manufacture of narrow gauge locomotives and this arrangement produced sixteen standardised designs, designated A to Q, which ranged from four-coupled 5 hp engines to six-coupled 55 hp models. The designs were sufficiently flexible to allow for the various gauges in use. Over the years,188 locomotives were supplied to these designs, in the 1930s the company manufactured narrow gauge steam outline diesel-hydraulic locomotives for use at amusement parks around the country. In 1931 4-6-2 Neptune was delivered to Scarborough North Bay Railway, followed a year later by 4-6-2 Triton, in the same year they supplied a 4-6-4T Robin Hood to Golden Acre Park in Leeds followed by a 4-6-2 May Thompson in 1933. They also supplied 4-6-2 Mary Louise and 4-6-4T Carol Jean to Blackpool Pleasure Beach for use on the 21 inches gauge Pleasure Beach Express in 1933, a fire in 1934 badly damaged Carol Jean so 4-6-2 Princess Royal was ordered as a replacement. 21 at the Rutland Railway 0-4-0DM Elland No.2 ft gauge 4wDM No, d558 at the Moseley Railway Trust at their Apedale Valley Light Railway 4wDM No. 4-6-2 Princess Margaret Rose, Midland Railway - Butterley During the Second World War the company diversified into armaments, in the post-war period Hudswell, Clarke and Co Ltd was closely involved in various secret programmes, including the British nuclear weapon programme. The airframe for the first British nuclear bomb, Blue Danube was manufactured by Hudswell Clarke at its Roundhay Road, Leeds, plant. The airframe for Red Beard, the second generation tactical nuclear bomb, followed with that for Violet Club, the Interim Megaton Weapon, all the bombs detonated at the Christmas Island H-bomb tests were contained in airframes designed and built by Hudswell Clarke. The company were also contributors to other military projects, e. g. the Centurion main battle tank conversion into an armoured bridgelayer. The contraction of defence manufacturing in the mid-1960s contributed to the sale, huwood-Hudswell Diesel Mines Locomotives Manchester Ship Canal locomotive 67 Oamaru Steam and Rail The Leeds Engine web site, leedsengine. info
2.
0-4-0
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Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 0-4-0 represents one of the simplest possible types, that with two axles and four coupled wheels, all of which are driven. The wheels on the earliest four-coupled locomotives were connected by a gear wheel. The notation 0-4-0T indicates a locomotive of this wheel arrangement on which its water and fuel is carried on board the engine itself. In Britain, the Whyte notation of wheel arrangement was often used for the classification of electric and diesel-electric locomotives with side-rod-coupled driving wheels. The UICs Bo classification for electric and diesel-electric locomotives indicates that the axles are independently motored, the term Four-coupled is often used for 0-4-0 locomotives. Four-wheeled is also used, but this term can also encompass other wheel arrangements. 0-4-0 locomotives were built as tank locomotives as well as tender locomotives, the former was more common in Europe and the latter in the United States, except in the tightest of situations such as that of a shop switcher, where overall length was a concern. The earliest 0-4-0 locomotives were tender engines and appeared as early as c, 0-4-0 tank engines were introduced in the early 1850s. The type was found to be so useful in locations that they continued to be built for more than a century. Richard Trevithicks Coalbrookedale, Pen-y-Darren and Newcastle locomotives were of the 0-4-0 type, the first 0-4-0 to use coupling rods was Locomotion No. 1, built by Robert Stephenson and Company for the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825, Stephenson also built the Lancashire Witch in 1828, and Timothy Hackworth built Sans Pareil which ran at the Rainhill Trials in 1829. The latter two later worked on the Bolton and Leigh Railway. A four-wheeled configuration, where all the wheels are driving wheels, the type was therefore mainly used for switchers and shunters. Because of the lack of stability, tender engines of type were only built for a few decades in the United Kingdom. They were built for a period in the United States. The possible tractive effort of an 0-4-0 within normal axle load limits was not enough to large loads. By 1900, they had largely been superseded for most purposes by locomotives with more complex wheel arrangements. They nevertheless continued to be used in situations where tighter radius curves existed or the length was an advantage
3.
Track gauge
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In rail transport, track gauge is the spacing of the rails on a railway track and is measured between the inner faces of the load-bearing rails. All vehicles on a network must have running gear that is compatible with the track gauge, as the dominant parameter determining interoperability, it is still frequently used as a descriptor of a route or network. There is a distinction between the gauge and actual gauge at some locality, due to divergence of track components from the nominal. Railway engineers use a device, like a caliper, to measure the actual gauge, the nominal track gauge is the distance between the inner faces of the rails. In current practice, it is specified at a distance below the rail head as the inner faces of the rail head are not necessarily vertical. In some cases in the earliest days of railways, the company saw itself as an infrastructure provider only. Colloquially the wagons might be referred to as four-foot gauge wagons, say and this nominal value does not equate to the flange spacing, as some freedom is allowed for. An infrastructure manager might specify new or replacement track components at a variation from the nominal gauge for pragmatic reasons. Track is defined in old Imperial units or in universally accepted metric units or SI units, Imperial units were established in United Kingdom by The Weights and Measures Act of 1824. In addition, there are constraints, such as the load-carrying capacity of axles. Narrow gauge railways usually cost less to build because they are lighter in construction, using smaller cars and locomotives, as well as smaller bridges, smaller tunnels. Narrow gauge is often used in mountainous terrain, where the savings in civil engineering work can be substantial. Broader gauge railways are generally expensive to build and require wider curves. There is no single perfect gauge, because different environments and economic considerations come into play, a narrow gauge is superior if ones main considerations are economy and tight curvature. For direct, unimpeded routes with high traffic, a broad gauge may be preferable, the Standard, Russian, and 46 gauges are designed to strike a reasonable balance between these factors. In addition to the general trade-off, another important factor is standardization, once a standard has been chosen, and equipment, infrastructure, and training calibrated to that standard, conversion becomes difficult and expensive. This also makes it easier to adopt an existing standard than to invent a new one and this is true of many technologies, including railroad gauges. The reduced cost, greater efficiency, and greater economic opportunity offered by the use of a common standard explains why a number of gauges predominate worldwide
4.
3 ft 6 in gauge railways
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Railways with a track gauge of 3 ft 6 in/1,067 mm were first constructed as horse-drawn wagonways. From the mid-nineteenth century, the 3 ft 6 in gauge became widespread in the British Empire, there are approximately 112,000 kilometres of 1,067 mm gauge track in the world. 1795 One of the first railways to use 3 ft 6 in gauge was the Little Eaton Gangway in England, other 3 ft 6 in gauge wagonways in England and Wales were also built in the early nineteenth century. 1862 In 1862 the Norwegian engineer Carl Abraham Pihl constructed the first 3 ft 6 in gauge railway in Norway,1865 In 1865 the Queensland Railways were constructed. Its 3 ft 6 in gauge was promoted by the Irish engineer Abraham Fitzgibbon,1868 In 1868 Charles Fox asks civil engineer Edmund Wragge to survey a 3 ft 6 in railway in Costa Rica. 1871 In 1871 the Canadian Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway,1872 In January 1872 Robert Fairlie advocated the use of 3 ft 6 in gauge in his book Railways Or No Railways, Narrow Gauge, Economy with Efficiency v. Broad Gauge, Costliness with Extravagance. 1872 also saw the opening of the first 3 ft 6 in gauge railway in Japan,1873 On 1 January 1873, the first 3 ft 6 in gauge railway was opened in New Zealand, constructed by the British firm John Brogden and Sons. Earlier built 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in and broad gauge railways were converted to the narrower gauge. Also in 1873 the Cape Colony adopted the 3 ft 6 in gauge, after conducting several studies in southern Europe, the Molteno Government selected the gauge as being the most economically suited for traversing steep mountain ranges. Beginning in 1873, under supervision of Railway engineer of the Colony William Brounger, the Cape Government Railways rapidly expanded and the gauge became the standard for southern Africa. 1876 Natal also converted its short 10 kilometres long Durban network from 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in broad gauge prior to commencing with construction of a network across the colony in 1876. Other new railways in Southern Africa, notably Mozambique, Bechuanaland, after 1876 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century numerous 3 ft 6 in gauge tram systems were built in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. In Sweden, the gauge was nicknamed Blekinge gauge, as most of the railways in the province of Blekinge had this gauge. An alternate name for this gauge, Cape gauge, is named after the Cape Colony in what is now South Africa, the term Cape Gauge is used in other languages, such as the Dutch kaapspoor, German Kapspur, Norwegian kappspor and French voie cape. After metrication in the 1960s, the gauge was referred to in official South African Railways publications as 1065 mm instead of 1067 mm, the gauge is sometimes referred to as CAP gauge, after C. A. The gauge name Colonial Gauge was used in New Zealand, in Australia the imperial term 3 foot 6 inch is used. In some Australian publications the term medium gauge is also used, in Japan 1,067 mm gauge is referred to as kyōki, which directly translates as narrow gauge. It is defined in metric units, Cape Government Railways Heritage railway List of track gauges Norwegian gauge controversy South African Trains – A Pictorial Encyclopaedia Why Did Japan Choose the 36 Narrow Gauge
5.
Valve gear
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It can also serve as a reversing gear. It is sometimes referred to as the motion, in the simple case, this can be a relatively simple task as in the internal combustion engine in which the valves always open and close at the same points. A further benefit may be obtained by admitting the steam to the cylinder slightly before front or back dead centre and this advanced admission assists in cushioning the inertia of the motion at high speed. Instead, a system of eccentrics, cranks and levers is used to control a D slide valve or piston valve from the motion. Generally, two simple harmonic motions with different fixed phase angles are added in varying proportions to provide a motion that is variable in phase. A variety of mechanisms have been devised over the years. Both slide and piston valves have the limitation that intake and exhaust events are fixed in relation to each other, lap is provided on steam edges of the valve, so that although the valve stroke reduces as cutoff is advanced, the valve is always fully opened to exhaust. However, as cutoff is shortened, the exhaust events also advance, the exhaust release point occurs earlier in the power stroke and compression earlier in the exhaust stroke. Early release wastes some energy in the steam, and early closure also wastes energy in compressing an otherwise unnecessarily large quantity of steam and these inefficiencies drove the widespread experimentation in poppet valve gears for locomotives. Intake and exhaust poppet valves could be moved and controlled independently of each other, a very late British design, the SR Leader class, used sleeve valves adapted from internal combustion engines, but this class was not a success. In stationary steam engines, traction engines and marine engine practice, in stationary engines trip valves were also extensively used. Valve gear was a field of invention, with probably several hundred variations devised over the years. However, only a number of these saw any widespread use. They can be divided into those that drove the standard reciprocating valves, those used with poppet valves, slip-eccentric - This gear is now confined to model steam engines, and low power hobby applications such as steam launch engines, ranging to a few horsepower. The eccentric is loose on the crankshaft but there are stops to limit its rotation relative to the crankshaft, the engine is pushed forwards to put the eccentric in the forward gear position and backwards to put it in the backward gear position. There is no control of cutoff. These included the Teutonic, Greater Britain and John Hick classes, gab or hook gear - used on earliest locomotives. Allowed reversing but no control of cutoff, one component of the motion comes from a crank or eccentric
6.
Railway coupling
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A coupling is a mechanism for connecting rolling stock in a train. The design of the coupler is standard, and is almost as important as the gauge, since flexibility. The equipment that connects the couplings to the stock is known as the draft gear. The different types of coupling do not always have formal or official names and these couplings followed earlier tramway practice but were made more regular. The vehicles are coupled by hand using a hook and links with a turnbuckle that draws the vehicles together, in Britain, this is called a screw coupling. Vehicles have buffers, one at each corner on the ends and this arrangement limits the slack in trains and lessens shocks. The earliest buffers were fixed extensions of the frames. This coupling is still the standard in European countries, the link-and-pin coupling was the original style of coupling used on North American railways. After most railroads converted to semi-automatic Janney couplers, the link-and-pin survived on forestry railways, while simple in principle, the system suffered from a lack of standardisation regarding size and height of the links, and the size and height of the pockets. The link-and-pin coupler consisted of a body that received an oblong link. During coupling, a worker had to stand between the cars as they came together and guide the link into the coupler pocket. Once the cars were joined, the employee inserted a pin into a hole a few inches from the end of the tube to hold the link in place. This procedure was exceptionally dangerous and many brakemen lost fingers or entire hands when they did not get out of the way of the coupler pockets in time. Many more were killed as a result of being crushed between cars or dragged under cars that were coupled too quickly, brakemen were issued with heavy clubs that could be used to hold the link in position, but many brakemen would not use the club, and risked injury. The link-and-pin coupler proved unsatisfactory because, It made a connection between the cars, with too much slack action. There was no design, and train crews often spent hours trying to match pins. Crew members had to go between moving cars during coupling, and were injured and sometimes killed. The links and pins were often pilfered due to their value as scrap metal, john H. White suggests that the railroads considered this to be more important than the safety issue at the time
7.
Cape Colony
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The Cape of Good Hope, also known as the Cape Colony, was a British colony in present-day South Africa and Namibia, named after the Cape of Good Hope. The British colony was preceded by an earlier Dutch colony of the same name, the Dutch lost the colony to Britain following the 1795 Battle of Muizenberg, but had it returned following the 1802 Peace of Amiens. It was re-occupied by the British following the Battle of Blaauwberg in 1806, the Cape of Good Hope then remained in the British Empire, becoming self-governing in 1872, and uniting with three other colonies to form the Union of South Africa in 1910. It then was renamed the Cape of Good Hope Province, South Africa became fully independent in 1931 by the Statute of Westminster. In the north, the Orange River, also known as the Gariep River, served as the boundary for some time, from 1878, the colony also included the enclave of Walvis Bay and the Penguin Islands, both in what is now Namibia. An expedition of the Dutch East India Company led by Jan van Riebeeck established a trading post, van Riebeecks objective was to secure a harbour of refuge for Dutch ships during the long voyages between Europe and Asia. Reflecting the multi-national nature of the trading companies, the Dutch also granted vrijburger status to a number of former Scandinavian and German employees as well. In 1688 they also sponsored the immigration of two hundred French Huguenot refugees who had fled to the Netherlands upon the Edict of Fontainebleau. There was a degree of assimilation due to intermarriage. Many of the colonists who settled directly on the frontier became increasingly independent, known as Boers, they migrated westwards beyond the Cape Colonys initial borders and had soon penetrated almost a thousand kilometres inland. Some Boers even adopted a nomadic lifestyle permanently and were denoted as trekboers, Dutch traders imported thousands of slaves to the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch East Indies and other parts of Africa. By the end of the century the Capes population swelled to about 26,000 people of European descent and 30,000 slaves. In 1795, France occupied the Seven Provinces of the Netherlands and this prompted Great Britain to occupy the territory in 1795 as a way to better control the seas in order stop any potential French attempt to reach India. The British sent a fleet of nine warships which anchored at Simons Town and, following the defeat of the Dutch militia at the Battle of Muizenberg, the Dutch East India Company transferred its territories and claims to the Batavian Republic in 1798, and ceased to exist in 1799. In 1806, the Cape, now controlled by the Batavian Republic, was occupied again by the British after their victory in the Battle of Blaauwberg. The temporary peace between Britain and Napoleonic France had crumbled into open hostilities, whilst Napoleon had been strengthening his influence on the Batavian Republic. The British, who set up a colony on 8 January 1806, hoped to keep Napoleon out of the Cape, in 1814 the Dutch government formally ceded sovereignty over the Cape to the British, under the terms of the Convention of London. The British started to settle the border of the colony
8.
Port Elizabeth
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Port Elizabeth or The Bay is one of the largest cities in South Africa, situated in the Eastern Cape Province,770 km east of Cape Town. The city, often shortened to PE and nicknamed The Friendly City or The Windy City, stretches for 16 km along Algoa Bay, Port Elizabeth is the southernmost large city on the African continent, just farther south than Cape Town. Port Elizabeth was founded as a town in 1820 to house British settlers as a way of strengthening the border region between the Cape Colony and the Xhosa and it now forms part of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality, which has a population of over 1.3 million. The area around what is now called Algoa Bay was first settled by hunting and gathering people ancestral to the San at least 100,000 years ago. Around 2,000 years ago, they were displaced or assimilated by agriculturalist populations ancestral to the Xhosa. For centuries, the area was marked on European navigation charts as a landing place with fresh water. One of the goals of the Portuguese Crown in the Indian Ocean was to take over the lucrative trade of Arab. As they took over that trade, the Portuguese strengthened trading with Goa, the name Algoa means to Goa, just as the port further north in present-day Mozambique, Delagoa means from Goa. The area became part of the Cape Colony and this area had a turbulent history between its founding by the Dutch East India Company in 1652 and the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 as a result of the British winning the Boer War. In 1799, during the first British occupation of the Colony during the Napoleonic Wars and this fort, built to protect against a possible landing of French troops, overlooked the site of what later became Port Elizabeth. The fort is now preserved as a monument, from 1814 to 1821, the Strandfontein farm, which later became the Summerstrand beach suburb of Port Elizabeth, was owned by Piet Retief. He later became a Voortrekker leader and was killed in 1837 by Zulu king Dingane during negotiations about land, an estimated 500 men, woman and children of his party were massacred. After Retief, the Strandfontein farm was owned by Frederik Korsten, another contemporary suburb of Port Elizabeth is named for him in the 21st century. At this time the town was founded by Sir Rufane Shaw Donkin, the Acting Governor of the Cape Colony. Diplomat Edmund Roberts visited Port Elizabeth in the early 1830s and he noted that Port Elizabeth in the 1820s had contained four houses, and now it has upward of one hundred houses, and its residents are rated at above twelve hundred persons. The Apostolic Vicariate of Cape of Good Hope, Eastern District, was established in the city in 1847, the town expanded as a diverse community comprising European, Cape Malay and other immigrants. The population increased rapidly after 1873 when the railway to Kimberley was built, during the Second Boer War, the port was an important transit point for British soldiers, horses and materials headed to the front by railway. While no armed conflict took place within the city, many refugees from the war moved into the city and these included Boer women and children, who were interned by the British in a concentration camp
9.
Table Bay
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Table Bay is a natural bay on the Atlantic Ocean overlooked by Cape Town and is at the northern end of the Cape Peninsula, which stretches south to the Cape of Good Hope. It was named because it is dominated by the flat-topped Table Mountain, bartolomeu Dias was the first European to explore this region in 1486. The bay, although famous for centuries as a haven for ships, is actually a rather poor natural harbour and is exposed to gales from both the SE and NW. Many sailing ships seeking refuge in the bay during the 17th and 18th centuries were driven ashore by storms, the Dutch colonists nevertheless persisted with their efforts on the shores of Table Bay, because good natural harbours along this coastline are almost non-existent. Eventually a harbour was built in Table Bay by a process of reclamation and was defended by breakwaters to protect shipping. The older part of structure is called the Victoria Dock. The newer part is called the Duncan Dock, robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for decades, is in this bay
10.
Mossel Bay
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Mossel Bay is a harbour town of about 130,000 people on the Southern Cape of South Africa. It is an important tourism and farming region of the Western Cape Province, Mossel Bay lies 400 kilometres east of the countrys seat of parliament, Cape Town, and 400 km west of Port Elizabeth, the largest city in the Eastern Cape Province. The older parts of the town occupy the side of the Cape St Blaize Peninsula. Tourism is another driver of Mossel Bays economy, the origin of the name Mossel Bay has to do with the ascendancy of the Dutch shipping merchants in the late 16th and the early 17th Centuries. Whatever the case, though, the mussels and oysters on the shore would have been an addition to the limited diet on which ship’s crews were expected to survive in those days. The modern history of Mossel Bay began on 3 February 1488, here they found a spring from which to replenish their water supplies. Dias is also credited with having given the Cape the name Cabo das Tormentas, dias’ excursion ashore ended hastily when the local people chased him off in a hail of stones. By the time the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama reached the area in 1497, da Gama bartered successfully for cattle with the local Khoi people in what is generally regarded as the first commercial transaction between Europeans and the indigenous people of South Africa. In 1501, another Portuguese navigator, Pedro dAtaide, sought shelter in Mossel Bay after losing much of his fleet in a storm. He left an account of the hidden in an old shoe which he suspended from a milkwood tree near the spring from which Dias had drawn his water. The report was found by the explorer to whom it was addressed — João da Nova —, João da Nova erected a small shrine near the Post Office Tree, and although no traces of it remain, it is considered the first place of Christian worship in South Africa. In July of the year, the first shipment of wheat grown in the area was shipped from the Bay. The name Aliwal South never stuck, however — even when the town was proclaimed in 1848. Fishing and farming remained the main activities of the area during the years of the 20th Century. The development of the led to a marked increase in property development in Mossel Bay. Tourism in particular has influenced much of the growth since 1994, the Afrikaans, Taal en Kultuurvereniging bought the farm Hartenbos, east of what was then the town of Mossel Bay, in 1936, and developed it as a holiday resort. Mossel Bay’s climate is mild throughout the year as the town is situated in the area where the winter rainfall and its weather is influenced by the Agulhas Current of the Indian Ocean to the south, and by the presence of the Outeniqua Mountains to the north. Mossel Bay receives 80% of its rainfall at night, frost is rare or almost absent and snow has never been recorded on the coastal platform
11.
Germiston
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Germiston is a city in the East Rand of Gauteng in South Africa. Germiston is now the seat of the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality which includes much of the East Rand, both men made fortunes and the town sprang up next to the mine. In 1921 the worlds largest gold refinery, the Rand Refinery, was established at Germiston, seventy percent of the western worlds gold passes through this refinery. Although gold mining wound down in Germiston, to the point that by the end of the 20th century it was no longer a mining centre. The WesBank Raceway motorsports facility was located in the city, the Raceway was formerly the Gosforth Park Race Club, one of the major horse racing facilities in Gauteng. Germiston Stadium, home stadium of Moroka Swallows FC is also located in the city and this is also the home ground for the Germiston Simmer Rugby Club and has a tartan track for athletics. The city has a number of historic buildings, among these are the St Andrews Presbyterian Church which was built in 1905, and St Boniface Church designed by Sir Herbert Baker, which was built in 1910. The church also houses the historic 1910 English Romantic Norman and Beard Organ, the Alexander Hotel was also partly designed by Baker, using his traditional stone appearance. This building has recently been renovated and now houses a well-known law firm. The builder of the hotel, Alexander Stuart, some of whose descendants live in Germiston. The hotel thus remains a memorial to his work in the city over a hundred years ago. South African Airways moved its office from Durban to Rand Airport in Germiston on 1 July 1935. It later moved the offices first to Johannesburg, then to Kempton Park, the city is an industrial centre with steel manufacture and distribution being the largest industries. It has large railway workshops, a glassworks, engineering companies, gas distribution firms. According to the 2001 census, the population of Germiston consisted of 139,719 people living in 49,062 households, and its land area was 129 square kilometres. Of this population,49. 8% described themselves as White,46. 8% as Black African,1. 9% as Coloured, Germiston High School was founded in 1917, alongside Victoria Lake. From the 1940s to 1963, the girls were based in Fourth Avenue in Lambton, at what was known as Germiston Girls High School, whilst the boys remained at the 1917 campus as Germiston Boys High School. In 1964, due to the need to relocate the Afrikaans Delville Primary School, famous past pupils include Dr Sydney Brenner, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize
12.
George, Western Cape
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George is a city in the Western Cape province of South Africa. The city is a holiday and conference centre and the administrative. The township of Pacaltsdorp lies to the south, the town of George was established as a result of the growing demand for timber and the wood used in building, transport and furniture. In 1776 the Dutch East India Company established an outpost for the provision of timber, the Timber Post had its own Poshouer, some 12 woodcutters, a blacksmith, wagon maker and 200 oxen plus families. After 1795 and the British occupation of the Cape, a caretaker of the forests in the area was appointed, after the second British occupation in 1806, it was decided that the Swellendam magistracy was too large and needed to be sub-divided. George was chosen because of the availability of good water, One of Van Kervels first acts as Landrost, was to dig a furrow to supply the first thirty six plots in George with water. An 1819 map shows the original furrows and storage dam where they remain to this day in the Garden Route Botanical Gardens, the first Furrow originated from the Rooirivier and later a diversionary weir was built at the Camphersdrift River. George gained municipal status in 1837, from 1772 there was a gradual influx of settlers intent on making a living from the forests. These were mostly descendants of the Dutch settlers, in early days the lives and livelihood of the people revolved around the timber industry and the rich forests in the vicinity and it remained a quiet outpost. After the ostrich feather slump and a drought in the Karoo during the early part of the 18th century. Rather than stay in a region they crossed the mountains to find a livelihood in the forests. Forest settlements, such as Karatara and Bergplaas were started and many of the dangerous people from the Gauteng were moved to these settlements. They were, however, a minority group, as most of the woodcutters lived outside these settlements, a small number were descendants of British immigrants who could find no other means of livelihood. There were also a number of Italian immigrants who had been brought to the area from Turin in 1879. It turned out to be a failure due to the lack of mulberry leaves. Finding themselves without some of these Italians drifted into the forests. Sons were considered to be an asset as, at the age of around 14 or 15, after very little schooling. The majority of these eventually became woodcutters themselves
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