In April 1904, the government of Natal bought the line for £725,000. Between 1904 and 1909, a link between the Natal portion of the NGR and the CGR lines in the Cape was built through Griqualand West. The line reached Riverside but was never finished. In 1884, the Nieuwe Republiek was founded by Lucas Johannes Meyer with its capital at Vryheid. In 1888, the Nieuwe Republiek was absorbed into the ZAR, and in 1902 it was annexed by the British and combined with the Natal colony. The area is rich in coal. In April 1901, the Glencoe-Dundee branch line reached the Buffels River - earlier the border of the Nieuwe Republiek. From 1901 to 1909, the branch line was extended through Vryheid to near Hlobane. At the same time, Utrecht was connected with the main line by a branch line. During the 19th century, a number of narrow-gauge lines were built in the mountains. As in India and elsewhere, such lines were more financially viable in hilly terrain. Such lines included, for instance, the Ffestiniog Railway in Wales and the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway in India. In 1899, Hullett & Co. obtained permission from the Natal government to build a private narrow-gauge line from Stanger in the tea plantations to the Kearsney tea factory. The line opened to both freight and passengers on 13 March 1901. In 1904, there were also narrow-gauge railways built in the Natal countryside. Narrow-gauge railways were cheaper than Cape gauge (1067 mm) and could also take sharper turns. The trade-off was that locomotives did not run as efficiently on them and therefore less could be hauled. The first narrow-gauge rail line in rural Natal, the Estcourt-Weenen line, opened in April 1907. The following year, the Stuartstown line opened between Donnybrook (a station on the Natal-Cape Line) and Umzinto (Esperanza, the terminus of a branch off the South Coast Line). The line between Umlaasweg and Mid-Illovo and the line from Port Shepstone to Paddock opened in 1911. The NGR lines established by 1 January 1912, are as follows:  In 1875, when the NGR was founded, two wood-burning locomotives (1067 mm track) were ordered from the British firm Dübs and Company to replace locomotives from the NRC (1435 mm track).