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Railway Station
Touws River, Western Cape

Date:1877
Type:Railway Station
Status:Derelict
Street:High St

 


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Coordinates:
33°20'18.02"S 20°2'13.04"E

"This remote siding in the Great Karoo, 15 miles beyond the summit at Matroosberg, got the full Victorian treatment. Touws River – at that time an abandoned farm in the wilderness – was selected as the site for a shed and workshops, not only for bankers up the north slope of Hex River Pass but also to provide fresh power onwards to Beaufort West. When the CGR reached here in 1877 it was named "Montagu Road" (changed to Touws River in 1883) and it would have been hard to foresee the important division point that it eventually became. The associated village was one of numerous settlements around the country that owed their existence to the railway."
Shared with permission from Les Pivnic of Soul of A Railway
Submitted by: Paul van der Merwe