page_title: South African Class 1E
section_title: Service
hierarchical_section_title: South African Class 1E / Service
caption_attribution_description: English: SAR Class 1E Series 1 E23 number plate Builder's number: SLM 2897/1923-24 Location: Nigel, Gauteng
context_page_description: The South African Railways Class 1E of 1925 was an electric locomotive.
  Between 1925 and 1945, the South African Railways placed altogether 172 Class 1E electric locomotives in service, spread over seven orders. They were the first mainline electric locomotives to be introduced in South Africa.
context_section_description: Early models bore number plates inscribed in English only. By 1938 when the Series 5 locomotives entered service, Afrikaans had been accepted as South Africa's second official language and new locomotives bore bilingual number plates.
  While they were employed mainly in Natal, some of the Class 1E units later also worked on the Witwatersrand and eventually also in the Western Cape. From early 1955, as the new Class 5E began to take over the Natal mainline, several Class 1Es were transferred to the Western Transvaal System to work as haulers on cross-Reef trips to transfer loads from yard to yard. Some of them covered more than 8,000,000 kilometres (5,000,000 miles) during their service lives.
  By the late 1960s some efforts were being made to keep steam locomotives out of the central Durban city areas and North Coast loads would be moved between the Bayhead marshalling yards and Stamford Hill by electric haulers. Steam would work goods trains north from there on the North Coast mainline. By 1969, the line to Stanger had been electrified, allowing Empangeni trains to be worked that far by electric units.
caption: Builders plate
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