The same year, influenced by his friend Phil Acutt's love of trains and the work done by the Railway Preservation Society in Witbank, Rohan attended an auction to buy a coach or two. The intention was to restore them and hitch them to a South African Railways train for family holidays. Steam train enthusiast Geoff Pethick was asked to assist Rohan whom he hoped was 'not another penniless lunatic with grand ideas'.
'It was 26th of September, a cold, grey day with rain in the air: he recalls. 'As we chatted I quickly realised that here was a man of vision.' Several coaches were purchased, and taken to the Society's yards in Witbank to be restored. One of them, Private Saloon No 15063, is still in service and another, an engineer's caboose, stands at Cape Town's Victoria and Alfred Waterfront where it serves as the marketing and reservations office. The difficulties of working with the South African Transport Services bureaucracy - a factor that has been a constant in the development of Rovos Rail - soon convinced Rohan that he needed his own engine, In December 1986 he found a Class 19D locomotive at a scrap metal yard. Built in 1938, it was recommissioned by Dunn's in Witbank and named Bianca, after one of his daughters.
Permission for Vos to run his train was granted, not without difficulty, with the added benefit of a licence for fare-paying passengers. This was when the idea of running a vintage train as a business venture was born. When the authorities vetoed the suggested name of Springbok Steam Safaris, it was simply called Rovos Rail. Armed with Les Pivnic's book on Dining Cars, Rohan started a search for suitable coaches. An early target was the Jewish Guild Country Club in Johannesburg where three dining cars were standing, vandalised and dilapidated, as part of an aborted restaurant venture. All three - 'Kei', 'Nile' and 'Modder' - were hauled to Witbank and returned to the rails.

In the years since then, family life has been inseparable from the business with Rovos Rail growing up alongside the Vos children. Family holidays always had another agenda, as they scoured the far ends of the countryside for coaches and locomotives to add to their collection. All the engines acquired for Rovos Rail have been named after the Vos children - Brenda and Bianca, Tiffany and Shaun - and nothing could be more appropriate as the family's history and memories are so tightly interwoven with the story of the acquisition and expansion of Rovos Rail.
Soon the latest magnificently restored and rebuilt engine - a 25 NC engine, number 3484, which has been converted from coal firing to oil - will be christened Marjorie by Rohan's mother, Mrs Marjorie Vos. It's this personal involvement by the Vos family that gives Rovos Rail part of its unique appeal. Before the first commercial trip in May 1988, marketing manager Joy Strydom joined Rovos Rail as their first employee, and is still with the company.
'Rohan called me out of the blue and we met at a Cape Town restaurant with a railway coach bar. Rohan spent most of the time checking it out to see what had been removed and which features remained. The romance of the railway project - and his enthusiasm - had me hooked.' It's this combination that has made Rovos Rail a winner. Through a decade of hard work, hard times, bankers and accountants who were by turns sympathetic and sceptical, the birth of a new democracy and a surge of tourism, there's been a special magic about Rovos Rail.
'There were many of us in those early years who didn't believe that Rohan would ever achieve what he had set out to do,' says Pethick. It's wonderful to see that, despite ups and downs, Rovos Rail is doing so well and has helped preserve so much of our railway history.'