Orders were received for all details of the 21st Brigade to proceed to Bloemfontein, but White's and Le Gallais' troops had to go first, with their horses and their transport of Cape carts: this took three days to complete, and we were to follow when sufficient trains should arrive. On Saturday night just after midnight, or rather on Sunday morning, I was awakened by hearing three dull explosions, evidently at some distance; and in a few minutes, Lieut. Bellamy came running up to say he thought the line had been blown up. As this might have been merely the preliminary to an attack on the railway station, with its great piles of stores, four patrols, each consisting of a section under an officer, were sent out at once in the direction of the explosions, with orders to communicate with the two pickets which we furnished to the north and north-west, and then to move round in a circular direction and to return to camp; when they came back other patrols were sent out and kept going until dawn. Soon, reports began to come in: Lieut. Ashworth, who was on picket well out to the north, reported that a train had passed him going north; that he had heard the slow panting of the engine going up the incline at Holfontein, about 5 miles off, followed by the explosions and a few rifle shots, after which all was still; but that the glare in the sky showed that the train had been set on fire. This glare increased in intensity, and soon the fireman of the engine arrived, followed in a while by the guard and another railway employé, a passenger, who were brought in by the pickets, and told us the whole story. It seems that on the train reaching the top of the bank, there was an explosion of dynamite in front of the engine, upon which the driver applied the vacuum brake; he then tried to run back, but, after climbing the hill, he had no steam left to blow off the vacuum and so release the brakes, and then, hearing another explosion in rear, he and the fireman jumped and ran, the former going north and the latter south. The guard and the passenger told a similar story, and added that the Boers fired a few shots at the engine and the guard's van, from a distance of about 300 yards to the right of the line, apparently with the intention of driving off the trainmen, in which they succeeded; and they then set the train on fire. It was full of medical and Ordnance stores and forage. Very fortunately, Captain Nanton, R.E., the Deputy-Assistant Director of Railways in this district, happened to be in the station with his armoured train, and dashed off as soon as the reports reached us, after entraining some of the Derbyshire as escort.