The railway authorities have quietly scrapped the running of more than half the country's long distance "sleeper" trains.
Pretoria, the capital, is left with no main-line sleeper trains at all.
Instead, most first-class and second-class accommodation on major routes has given way from this week to third-class "sitter" trains - there are no compartments, and passengers have to sit on benches in "open" carriages for overnight journeys.
Railway officials say this is a business decision, made as a result of market research.
The relatively more expensive sleeping compartments on most trains were simply not being used, they say.
Bus services and low-cost airlines appear to have won passengers away, and seem finally to have wrecked the national railway service as it once was.
The executive manager of operator Shosholoza Meyl, Ngabi Mareko, tried to put a brave face on the cutbacks. She said: "Our goals are to continue to earn our customers' confidence to keep them satisfied by serving them to the best of our ability."
But now the world-famous Trans-Karoo (until recently a daily service to and from Pretoria) has been cut to four days a week, and runs only between Johannesburg and Cape Town.
There are just three other main-line sleeper trains left in South Africa:
- Johannesburg - Durban, reduced from six days a week to weekends only.
- Johannesburg - Port Elizabeth, reduced from six days a week to twice a week.
- Cape Town - Durban (the former Orange Express), once a week.
Abandoned altogether are the old Bosvelder and Komati expresses. The Bosvelder used to run daily from Johannesburg through Pretoria to Polokwane and Musina. The Komati ran daily to Nelspruit and Komatipoort.
East London has also been left without any sleeper service.
In most cases, where the sleeper compartment trains have now vanished, they have been replaced by "economy" (formerly third-class) trains on slightly different time- tables.
A spokesperson for Shosholoza Meyl, Molatwane Likhethe, said: "We are governed by our passengers and are reorganising according to their needs. It did not make business sense to run coaches with only a couple of people in them."
Likhethe said buses, taxis and low-cost flights had drawn people away from the railways, but "we will try to lure them back".
He acknowledged that issues of catering, security and punctuality could have been factors disaffecting passengers.
"But we are consistently trying to improve. In security, we are improving all the time. We are for trains, not against them, and we want to be the best.
"We are working hard to ensure the service doesn't die."
An analyst who asked not to be named because of his links with the railway service said: "Sleeper coaches are costly to run and they were just not being used sufficiently.
"The competition (buses and cheap flights) has been incredibly strong and the railways have simply been beaten.
"It's a matter of supply and demand: it doesn't help supplying things that people don't use."
The Blue Train and other premium hotel trains are not affected.