The South African Railways Class 7A 4-8-0 of 1896 was a steam locomotive from the pre-Union era in the Cape of Good Hope.

Between 1896 and 1901, the Cape Government Railways placed a second batch of altogether 46 7th Class steam locomotives with a 4-8-0 Mastodon wheel arrangement in service on its Midland and Eastern Systems.

They were the first to be equipped with type ZC tenders, which rode on two two-axle bogies and had a capacity of 5 long tons 10 hundredweight (5.6 tonnes) of coal and 2,600 imperial gallons (11,800 litres) of water.

[1][5] In 1897, a further four 7th Class locomotives were ordered by the CGR from Neilson, for use on the new Vryburg to Bulawayo line of the fledgling Bechuanaland Railway Company (BR).

[4][5] In 1898, another ten 7th Class locomotives were taken into service by the CGR, as well as another three by the Imvani-Indwe Railway which operated a branch line from Sterkstroom to the Indwe Collieries in the Eastern Cape.

[2][9] When all but two of these 46 locomotives were assimilated into the South African Railways (SAR) in 1912, they were renumbered in the range from 988 to 1031 and designated Class 7A.

These four engine numbers had been used previously on four of the 1892 and 1893 batch of 7th Class locomotives, also built by Neilson, which had since been renumbered in the range from 712 to 715 when they were transferred from the Midland to the Eastern System.

In summary: In 1915, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, the German South West Africa colony was occupied by the Union Defence Forces.

The company worked the teak forests which stretched 100 miles (160 kilometres) to the north-west of Livingstone, where it built one of the longest logging railways in the world to serve its sawmill at Mulobezi.

[12] Cape 7th Class locomotives were also built for the Soudan Military Railway during Kitchener's campaign in Sudan.

When he arrived in the territory in 1895, he built a railway line, strictly for military purposes, running parallel to the Nile River for nearly 200 miles (322 kilometres) from Wadi Halfa to the Third Cataract at Kerma, and then another line from Wadi Halfa across 571 miles (919 kilometres) through the Nubian Desert to Atbarah and on to Khartoum to the south.

The reason was that they were used on a single line which was still being constructed into the desert from Wadi Halfa and which initially had no water supply at the far end.