Administration in January 1957 and recorded at the Bureau of Heraldry as part of a municipal flag in 1967. The arms were : Per pale, dexter Or, a mining headgear Sable; sinister Vert, a sheep-shear and spade in saltire, handles upwards, Argent; on a chief Gules a phoenix on a nest enflamed, Or. In layman's terms, the shield was divided vertically, displaying a black mine headgear on a golden background and a crossed sheep-shear and spade on a green background, and across the top was a golden phoenix on a red horizontal stripe. (Note : these are not the colours shown on the cigarette card issued in 1931. Either the cigarette card is wrong, or the municipality changed the colours some time between 1931 and 1957.) The motto was Stabiliter progrediens. Municipality (2) — The Ermelo transitional local council which administered the town during the local government reorganisation in the late 1990s, registered its own arms at the Bureau of Heraldry in May 1998. The arms were: Per fess Or and Vert, charged over the partition line with five lozenges conjoined, per fess Sable and Argent; in chief a phoenix Sable issuant from flames Gules and in base sheep shears and a spade in saltire, blades to base, Argent. In layman's terms, this shield was divided horizontally into gold and green, with a black phoenix at the top and a crossed silver sheep-shear and spade at the bottom, and across the centre a row of five diamond-shapes divided horizontally into black over silver. The crest was a green mural crown with the brickwork outlined in gold. The motto was Stabiliter progrediens. These arms have been taken over by the Msukaligwa municipality, of which Ermelo now forms part. Infrastructure Transportation It is also a railway junction between Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal. The rail junction connects to Machadodorp which is on the Pretoria and Maputo railway line. The town also lies on the railway line that connects the coalfields with the Port of Richards Bay on the Indian Ocean. Coal trains shipping to the coast from the mines change electric locomotives here, as power converts from Direct current to Alternating current - a legacy of the British and Afrikaner histories of the area. Roads Ermelo is the crossroads of three national highways, N2, N11 and the N17, only Pretoria and Johannesburg are crossed by more. The N2 freeway connects Ermelo south east to