Hex River Tunnels

|}Hexton is a railway route between De Doorns and Kleinstraat through the Hex River Mountains of the Western Cape Province, South Africa, that consists of four tunnels, three passing loops and a road-over-rail bridge. The line, which connects De Doorns in the Hex River valley with Touws River in the Great Karoo, is part of the main rail route between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Of the 30km of track, 16.8km are underground. The four Hex River Tunnels consist of a twin tunnel of 0.5km and three single tunnels of 1.1km, 1.2km and 13.5km respectively. The Hexton line finally eliminated the bottleneck of the Hex River rail pass.The Hex River rail passThe enormous Cape Fold Belt effectively separated Cape Town on the coast from the hinterland of Southern Africa, and had obstructed previous attempts to expand the Cape Colony's railway infrastructure inland. In 1872 the Cape Government, under Prime Minister John Molteno, ordered that a railway line must be constructed across this barrier in the vicinity of the Hex River Mountains. The Cape Government Railways (CGR) was formed and railway engineer William George Brounger was appointed to oversee the task.RouteThe Hex River Mountain was a major obstacle to be overcome during the construction of the railway between Cape Town and the diamond fields at Kimberley in the Northern Cape. In 1874 surveyor Wells Hood, under the instruction of Brounger, found a potential route up the 2353ft climb from De Doorns in the Hex River valley to the top of the Karoo plateau east of the Valley, that would require gradients of no more than 1 in 40 uncompensated, very steep by railway standards, and tight curves with a minimum radius of 100m. He also proposed that a short tunnel would be required.