After drowning in sand for months, there appears to be hope at last for Simon's Town, in the Western Cape, and its rail commuters. Metrorail has finally been given permission to start clearing the tracks at Simon's Town railway station, which have been submerged in sand since February.Richard Walker, regional manager for Metrotrail, said the line was expected to be open by mid-January.A retaining wall built to keep the sand off the tracks collapsed earlier this year, making the passenger line impassable.Irate commuters are furious about the time it is taking to re-establish the train service.For Andrew Jafta, like hundreds of other people living in the south peninsula who rely on the train service, his daily journey to work and back has been taking twice as long."This is ridiculous. Even though Metrorail provides a bus service between Simon's Town and Fish Hoek station, my travelling time has doubled."It usually takes me about 45 minutes to get to Steenberg. Now it takes nearly two hours because we have to change to the bus and sit and wait," he said.Another commuter said: "It's a disgrace. This is a regular occurrence. What we don't understand is why it is taking so long to fix."I should think you could have cleaned up this mess in a week with some labourers and a few bricklayers, and reopened the station ages ago."Walker explained that the recovery of the line had been delayed because of the need to comply with Department of Environmental Affairs regulations."Regulations require that we submit an environmental management plan on how the work will affect the environment."Jordan Amisi, of the Simon's Town Tourism Information Centre, said the situation had not had a significant effect on tourism or commerce."Most tourists hire cars, or have their own. There is also the bus service which operates on the same schedule as the trains and for the same price."But tourists who wanted to enjoy the scenic train ride from Simon's Town to Muizenberg are a little disappointed," he said...