Welcome to
The Hilton Steam Heritage Association
photo: Kevin Le Poer Trench
We are a community-driven project to preserve the priceless heritage of Hilton Railway Station, the museum exhibits and the surrounding area, and steam rail tourism in general.
Hilton station is situated north of Pietermaritzburg on the original N G R mainline. The station was built in 1888. The station consists of the main station building and goods sheds. Hilton Station has a slightly curved platform. The main building houses a museum. It is the only station of its type left on the original main line. The film Cry the Beloved Country was shot here, as have been some early morning TV Body Beat shows and a couple of other documentaries.
The good shed houses several model layouts which is open to the public on Saturday mornings.
The station yard consists of mainline and 2 loops, plus a couple of dead end lines. There is still 2 kilometres of mainline remaining towards Sweetwater’s and in the opposite direction towards Cedara a distance of five and a half kilometres, where the line joins the current main Durban to Johannesburg line.
There is a section of line about 300 meters where the sleepers and track have been stolen.
Come for the trains, stay for the treats…
Moo-Moos Ice Cream
Cindi Meumann and Caryl Ballance (wife of Dave Ballance of Station Stop Coffee Shop) converted the Station’s old storeroom into a Vintage Ice-Cream Shoppe. They serve a variety of artisanal ice-creams with flavours like Fudge Yum, Cookie Crush, Honey Comb and Nougat, Chocolate Mousse and Candied Almonds (to name a few) to taunt the tastebuds of children of every age! And just to keep it really vintage, you can order your favourite Flake 99 or another soft-serve treat of choice. Milkshakes aplenty are also available. Open from 12h00-15h00 Monday to Friday; 09h00 – 15h00 on Weekends and holidays!
Our History
Hilton was at one stage home to locomotives nos. 15F 3052 – 19D 2269 – S2 3778- GF 2380.
All that remains are locos No 329 + 314 H2’s – NBT ERPM No. 6, 696 19AR – 1402 19B – 1963 15AR – 1276 1 Class plus 36Ton Cowan Sheldon crane.
This photo was taken where Hilton Build It stands today which was the old loco depot
As can be seen on all the loco's we have replica number plates made and fitted them this morning 13 November 2010
North British Tank this locomotive came from ERPM East Rand Proprietary Mines
Cowans Sheldon Crane number 184. This was Masons Mill's breakdown crane used to recover derailed trains
AS HAS THE 1 CLASS 1276 Designed by D.A.Hendrie and supplied by North British Locomotive co. between (1904-1905)
The 15 F which is owned by the well-known artist David Shepherd was returned to steam in Hilton in the late 1980’s and is now up in Germiston with Reef steamers.
David Shepherd
and his 15F now in Germiston
This line in its years of operation would have had all the major passenger trains over it. Included in this history is that General Jan Smuts stopped over regularly with the White Train.
Just below Hilton Station on the Pietermaritzburg side, there is a tunnel, which was on the second, re-alignment opened in 1915. The original 1884 route via Sweetwaters and Hilton retained its daily local passenger train service to Howick until 22 April 1981. The daily wayside goods train continued to use the Hilton route until 1987. It is thought that the goods trains continued to use the line until the major washaway occurred on 26 September 1987. No repairs were done and the instruction to lift the line was given about a year later. The third railway route up Town Hill (the one through the 6km tunnels) was opened on 28 March 1960 and that the second route (the Ketelfontein line 1915) would have been decommissioned almost immediately.
Class H2, number 314. Originally a class H, 101 engines were built between 1899 and 1903.
Between 1910 and 1922 they had one set of drive wheels removed as they were prone to derailing in the shunting yards and were reclassified as H2
H2 314 which has already had a coat of paint
Hilton Railway Station, Hilton Avenue,
Hilton, South Africa