Historical Waterval Boven

The Five-Arch Bridge near Waterval Boven.

© Chris Marais

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The sleepy little Mpumalanga village of Waterval Boven (now Emgwenya – 'place of the crocodile') was once a bustling railway centre serving the great Eastern Line between the old Transvaal Republic and Mozambique.

Back in the 1930s, Waterval Boven was populated by steam locomotive drivers, firemen, guard cleaners, firelighters, ‘wash-outs’ – men who cleaned the steel behemoths – and their families.

Locals occupied little red-brick railway houses, called ‘P95s’, and worked in shifts in the town they called ‘Boven’.

‘Boven never slept,’ an old-timer named Fred Geyser recalls. ‘There would be people awake at all hours, men coming on or off shift, and their wives baking cottage pie or macaroni and cheese for them in portable tins.’

Most of the houses had shutters, to keep sound out so the men could sleep during the day.

Each driver had his own special whistle code that he blew coming into town, so his family would know he was arriving.

‘We used to be really noisy on New Year’s Eve,’ says Fred. ‘The preacher would have to stop his sermon just before midnight, when the train whistles, town sirens, car hooters and assorted bells went off.’

Steam was phased out in 1966 and Waterval Boven went into decline.

The locomotive teams and their families left and their little homes were later sold to pensioners for a pittance.

Waterval Boven (which means 'above the waterfall' in Afrikaans) was established on 20 June 1894, and has a sister town a few kilometres away called 'Waterval Onder' ('below the waterfall), where President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal Republic once lived. Waterval Onder is also worth a brief visit.

Waterval Boven's primary purpose was as a locomotive depot and marshalling yard. It soon boasted a population of more than 3 500.

To haul the 1-in-20 gradient up the escarpment, a 4km length of rack railway was built between Waterval Boven and Waterval Onder.

Three rack engines for hauling and shunting the trains at a blinding speed of 8km/h were used, but the passengers didn’t mind because of the lovely views outside their windows.

Do the Geysers miss the era of steam?

‘Not at all,’ says Fred. ‘Boven was polluted from all the train soot and smoke. And it was often so noisy on a Sunday you couldn’t hear the preacher.’

Today Waterval Boven, in its new guise as Emgwenya, is an international rock-climbing destination and a favoured trout-fishing spot.

But it’s quiet in town these days, except for the memories of the raucous railmen who once thrived here.