Tracking the history of Benoni’s railway lines
After the Anglo Boer War (1902), a railway station was opened just south of Benoni on a Rand Tram Line, near Actonville, in order to serve the private sidings to the mines to the north and the Apex stone quarry to the south.
This line was known as a Rand Tram Line and had nothing to do with the electric (battery) buses which the Benoni Municipality ran many years later.
The station on this Rand Tram Line was named Benoni Junction and then changed to Benoni in 1904.
On July 4, 1911, the second railway line, going northwards from Dunswart, was named New Benoni Station.
It was officially opened in 1912 and ran past Western Extension.
Originally, the line crossed Lanyon Street (before the bridge was built).
It ran past the old abattoir and just north of the old traffic department testing grounds (this is where the new station was situated).
Today the site houses the licensing department and Lakeside Mall.
This railway line crossed Bunyan and Tom Jones streets then curved and crossed Kleinfontein Lake over an embankment (now Voortrekker Street), creating Civic Lake before linking up with the current railway line, heading east.
When New Benoni Station opened in 1912, near the abattoir, Benoni Junction, near Actonville, changed its name to Kleinfontein Station.
The third railway line was built from Dunswart to the present Benoni Station, in Harpur Avenue, and opened on April 12, 1923. It went on to Apex with a stop named New Kleinfontein between the latter stations.
With the opening of this line, the Kleinfontein Station, near Actonville, was renamed Rangeview Station.
This eventually closed down when the mine siding was closed in 1970.
At the same time, in 1923, the Benoni Station near the old traffic department testing grounds was renamed Cranbourne Station.
When Cranbourne Station was decommissioned in the 1950s, the line was diverted west of Bunyan Street between Civic and Middle lakes to follow the current route to Northmead Station and beyond, with Voortrekker Street crossing the lakes over the old railway embankment.
Information supplied by Glynis Cox Millett-Clay.
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