Hi JohnG,
1. The link for the 1880's railway workers to Natal is
https://molegenealogy.blogspot.co.za/search?q=1885+railways. I have asked for their research source as I would very much like to follow up on that. I did check for any Pope's without success. However:.....
2. As your arrival dates and information seemed sound, I never double checked that until now. I seem to have found some conflicting info. As you have found out searching records in SA is not easy, but one of the worth while sites is
www.eggsa.org. They have transcribed some of the shipping lists, the following extract is from the site - arriving on the "SS Spartan" 22/2/1884 is the following
"Surety Name Immigrant Name Sex Age Marital Status Trade
information
Wolff Sam, Estcourt POPE, B.D. M Adult Married Stone mason and wife
POPE, F.A. F Adult Married "
The link to this search on eggsa didn't work, so you will have to do the search yourself - from the home page, right hand side under
eggsa library, click on
passanger list project then on the passenger list project page on the left click on
search passenger lists. Leave port as all and simply search for surname "Pope". Scroll down to you find B D Pope and click on the button "B D Pope in context of the list" and you will get all arrivals for that ship and the shipping route etc.
So, if this is
your B D Pope and wife F Pope, then they came out under surety of Sam Wolff of Estcourt. My thoughts are: As a stone mason, there would be work building bridges for the railways and if my memory is correct, there are stone bridges on the line in the Estcourt area, or, there are numerous stone buildings in the town and Sam Wolff was a builder who needed a accomplished mason and the railways happened a bit later. The railway got to Estcourt in 1885.
Going back to comment 1. above. If we can find records in Natal Archives in Pietermaritzburg (HELP any archivists in PMB) I can request the files and go and photograph the relevant info, however this could take months to accomplish or never !!! I'll keep a list of names of railway workers and try and look them all up.
Groom: If you are still following this thread, I'll keep your research in mind as well.
Regards
Catherine