JENNY'S OUR GIRL!

These three brothers are all passionate about this steam train, which they've lovingly restored and which once again has paying passengers on board

- PIETER VAN ZYL

SHE thunders into the station in a cloud of steam, the hiss of brakes and the shrill of a whistle, stopping everyone in the station in their tracks.

Jenny, a newcomer to the Southern Cape Rail way line between Hartenbos and Great Brak in the Garden Route, is a thing of beauty – but no one is prouder and more in love with this majestic machine than her owners, Sean, Kevin and Graeme Ekström.

The Mossel Bay businessmen discovered Jenny in a depot near Cape Town Station where she’d been languishing for years and faced being dismantled and sold as scrap metal.

Determined to give her a new lease of life, they bought her from Transnet and spent thousands restoring the train, which was built in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1948, to her former glory.

It was a true labour of love and although the brothers had no idea if the project made any kind of business sense, they went for it anyway.

“We were born with steam in our veins,” Graeme (42) says. “The three of us grew up with my grandfather, who was a steamtrain driver and our dad, Errol [who died of a heart attack in 1991], was crazy about steam trains.”

The brothers have joined us in the train’s dining car and they’re like proud dads when they talk about what it took to get Jenny and five of her original carriages back on track.

The dining car is quite something to behold: the bar and fridges, the special nook where wine is stored, the extractor fan, wooden tables and chairs, and even the cutlery that jingles as the train moves are all original features from other trains that operated between 1830 and 1970.

The folding tables in the carriages were also bought from other trains and there’s a kiosk at the back where passengers can buy pies and hot chips.