The company was based in Amsterdam and Pretoria, and operated in the South African Republic (ZAR) during the late 19th century.

At the request of ZAR president Paul Kruger, the NZASM constructed a railway line between Pretoria and Lourenço Marques in Portuguese East Africa (now Maputo in Mozambique).

The Witwatersrand Gold Rush after 1886 resulted in the rapid industrialization of the ZAR, making access to the ocean even more important, and allowed the suddenly cash-flush republic to invest in large-scale infrastructure projects.

It will set an indelible seal upon the freedom, the independence, the nationality of the Republics, and will put an effectual barrier on the extension of British dominion over the Vaal and Orange Rivers, it will make it perfectly immaterial to us whether the Liberals or Conservatives in England, or Molteno or Patterson at the Cape, are in power.In 1874 the Volksraad of the ZAR decided that a railway would be built connecting the ZAR with Lourenço Marques on Delagoa Bay in Portuguese East Africa (now Maputo in Mozambique).

After initial success in raising capital and acquiring a railway concession from the Portuguese government, the project was stalled by the outbreak of the First Boer War.

After the end of the war in 1881 the project was resumed, this time with renewed enthusiasm due to the threat of British domination over the Boer Republics.

Although Johannesburg Park Station has twice been reconstructed, the 1897 building was preserved and moved a short distance to Newtown where it still stands, unused, today.

[1] As a result of the rapid development of the goldfields on the Witwatersrand in the 1880s and the demand for coal by the growing industry, on 20 July 1888 the ZAR government granted a concession to the NZASM to construct a 16 miles (26 kilometres) railway line from Johannesburg to Boksburg.

[4][5][6][7] The concession was extended the following year to continue the line eastward to Springs, where coal was known to exist, and westward via Roodepoort to Krugersdorp.

It hauled the first train on the Randtram line when it was opened on 17 March 1890, and was retired in December 1903, by which time it had covered a distance of 113,309 miles (182,353 kilometres).

In order to have an outlet to a harbour, a railway line from Delagoa Bay in Portuguese East Africa to Pretoria had been proposed to the Volksraad of the ZAR by President F.T.

The resulting agreement was for the Portuguese to construct the section from Delagoa Bay to the border at Komatipoort, while the ZAR would be responsible for the continuation of the line to Pretoria.

Waterval Boven was reached on 20 June 1894 and Balmoral, near Witbank, on 20 October 1894, connecting with the line which had simultaneously been built eastwards from Pretoria.

[4][8] In terms of construction, the climb up the escarpment was arguably the most difficult section to be encountered by the railway builders on the route.

In 1882, George Pigot Moodie, Surveyor General of the ZAR, suggested that the Oosterlijn needed to reach Ermelo through the Cape River Valley rather than through Nelspruit.

[9] This was all later rendered moot, as the discovery of gold in 1884 in the Cape Valley near Barberton required the building of a branch line to the mines.

In 1888, the Cape Colony and Orange Free State governments agreed to build a railway between Port Elizabeth and Bloemfontein.

In May 1890, the rapid population growth of Johannesburg and the need to ship in heavy mining equipment required a railway to reach the city.

[11][12] Upon completion of this railway line, it became possible to import heavy machinery, both for gold mining and for the construction of the western portion of the Oosterlijn.

The railway, which climbed 452 m in the 57 km between Newcastle and Charlestown, was opened by President Kruger of the ZAR and the Governor of Natal on 7 April 1891.

[11][15] In November 1894, the ZAR and Great Britain agreed to meet in Swaziland, with President Kruger and the British High Commissioner Sir Henry Loch as signatories.

In 1885, the Cape railway reached Kimberley, and the following year, when the ZAR had difficulty obtaining a £5,000 loan and McMurdo struggled to build the Delagoa Bay line through the swamps near Delagoa Bay, President Kruger and the Cape government proposed extending the Kimberley line to near the Rand.

At the beginning of 1898, to help the gold mining industry, railway tariffs were lowered, despite losses growing to £13,047 by the end of that year.

[18] In 1905, after the NZASM was merged into the Central South African Railways (CSAR), the Zuidwesterlijn was extended to Fourteen Streams (near Warrenton),[11] and today the line is served by the Blue Train.

Out of 258 locomotives in the fleet, 249 were designed by the German firm Maschinenfabrik Esslingen, six by the British manufacturer Manning Wardle, and Louis Smulders & Co. out of Utrecht, Netherlands.

[20][21] When the Second Boer War broke out, the Pretoria-Pietersburg rail line was expropriated from its British owners by the ZAR government and placed under the control of the NZASM.

[citation needed] After protracted negotiations, NZASM's shareholders and creditors were given some compensation for debts and losses incurred by the company being seized by the British.

[citation needed] A great deal of the NZASM's infrastructure including bridges, drains, houses, and stations still exists and in many cases is still owned and actively used by Transnet.