Beginning in August 1980, the South African Railways placed 101 Class 36-200 General Motors Electro-Motive Division type SW1002 diesel-electric locomotives in service.

In 1984, one Class 36-200 locomotive was also built for the Bophuthatswana National Development Corporation for use at the Ga-Rankuwa Industrial Estate.

By early 2002, ARTS locomotives were employed at the Rustenburg Platinum Mine in the North West Province, at Iscor in Pretoria where it took over the entire railway operation, and at the Richards Bay Coal Terminal in KwaZulu-Natal.

[1] The BNDC locomotive did not remain in service in Bophuthatwana very long before it went to Columbus Stainless in Middelburg, Transvaal.

The Class 36-200 builder’s works numbers, dates or years built and the distribution of the non-SAR industrial locomotives are listed in the table.

In the 1990s many of them began to be repainted in the Spoornet orange livery with a yellow and blue chevron pattern on the buffer beams.