THEN & NOW | Hilton Railway Station

Growing up in Hilton, I always felt a sense of nostalgia when we drove past the railway station on the main road. The old locomotives seemed forlorn where they stood, rusting in the train yard, and I couldn’t help but imagine how impressive they must have been in their prime.

The station itself was built in 1888 as a stop on the old Natal Government Railways line that had opened four years previously, in 1884, connecting Durban to Johannesburg.

“When I first moved here, I remember picking up my monthly delivery of KWV wines from the train station,” my dad Mike tells me.