Stellenbosch’s train station has been refurbished.
The Stellenbosch line is expected to open by the conclusion of February after years of closure, according to Metrorail.
Metrorail has pushed the deadline out by two months after promising that the line from Stellenbosch would resume by the terminate of 2023.
When GroundUp visited Stellenbosch’s Du Toit station in December, the rail tracks were covered with bushes and debris. On Tuesday, when we visited again, most of the bush and debris had been cleared.
The two train stations in Stellenbosch – Du Toit and Stellenbosch – were clean and refurbished, there were no signs of vandalism, the buildings were locked up, and both stations had security officials manning the stations.
Acting Regional Manager Raymond Maseko said that Metrorail had “repaired the major vandalism” and now the Stellenbosch station required some basic cleaning.
In July Metrorail said that contracts for the Stellenbosch and Strand lines had been awarded “to recover the electrification network” and that work was underway. The train service from Strand resumed in November 2023.
Maseko said that the situation to restore the Stellenbosch line was delayed after a “substantial fragment of the track was washed away” during the floods in September and this is currently being fixed.
Metrorail services maintain gradually resumed since collapsing during the Covid lockdown due to theft and vandalism. The Southern line partially reopened in July 2020 and became largely operational in January 2022, though with far fewer trains than five years ago. The Northern line partially resumed services in March 2022 and opened further in January 2023.
The Central Line partially reopened in March 2023 after being closed for more than three years. But large parts of it remain closed.
GroundUp published stories describing the collapse of Metrorail long before services stopped during Covid.
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Badger the Burglar
Botswana: You have two cows. But that\’s not surprising because you have pretty much every type of non-extinct mammal in your country.
Tart Voodoo
So I\’m real good friends with this guy named Juan Ted. Now, Juan is a pretty improbable guy. He can steal ANYTHING he wants to. Literally anything. It could be the shirt off your back, the wallet in your pocket, or I\’m even sure he\’d find a way to steal your house (And your spouse too). So anyway, one day Juan and I are sitting around watching TV, and they announced that the hope diamond will not be on display anymore and is now getting moved to an undisclosed location. So as we hear this, Juan says \”I\’m gonna steal it\”. Now I know how good Juan is at this kind of stuff, so I just tell him good luck and he goes on his way. Eventually he narrows his search down to a small cave in South Africa. When Juan gets there, he doesn\’t see any guards or anything outside the cave, so he just walks in assuming he was wrong about where the diamond was. He wanders around for a while until he sees a long lit hallway with the hope diamond at the end of it. Confident in his abilities, he strolls over to the diamond and picks it up before realizing its a trap! Suddenly, red lights flashed, armed men came running out, sirens went off. You could hear one of the men say under his breath \”We finally caught Juan Ted.\” But Juan, being the best thief in the world, said \”Not quite. On the count of three, I will disappear.\” As the men looked around confused, Juan began to count. \”Uno. Dos.\” And he disappeared without a tres.