Cane trains make comeback
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Kaua'i Bureau
PUHI, Kaua'i — A new era of steam locomotion is under way on Kaua'i, with the establishment of two new railroad lines running old steam engines.
Jan TenBruggencate • The Honolulu Advertiser
The Grove Farm Homestead Museum is laying track along an old railway bed that once brought sugar cane to the Lihu'e Mill. It will bring one of its three working plantation-era steam locomotives there, and run it monthly as an educational program of the museum.
Grove Farm Homestead Museum's steam engine Kaipu hauls a group of schoolchildren at its Puhi train barn. The museum's new rail line could be a half-mile long.
"We have 1,200 feet down and hope to do half a mile," museum director Bob Schleck said. "Miss Mabel (Wilcox, the museum founder) wanted Grove Farm Homestead to represent a developing sugar plantation," and trains were a big part of plantations for 70 years or so of their history, from the late 1800s to the middle 1900s.
Only a couple of miles away, at the old plantation manager's estate called Kilohana, investors plan a 2.5-mile figure-eight loop of track where they hope to run daily tours using two steam locomotives that once operated at O'ahu Sugar Co. That project goes before the Kaua'i Planning Commission for permits this week .
Project manager Fred Atkins said the reaction of old-time Kaua'i residents to the idea of a working cane train has been heartening.
"The old folks just light up," he said.
Architect Boone Morrison, a railroad buff and consultant on the project, agreed: "There's something about steam railroading that just gets people."
If permits are granted, the railroad could be built as early as the end of the year. Principals of Kilohana's Kaua'i Plantation Railway say they have lined up a source of U.S.-made rails, and have found two former O'ahu Sugar locomotives in a foreign country that were still operating as recently as last year.
They plan two attached loops of track, forming a flattened figure-eight. The trains would run through examples of Hawaiian agricultural activities: fields of sugar, coffee, pineapple, taro, fruit trees, truck crops, hardwood trees and pasture.
Morrison said that in addition to the two 18-ton Baldwin steam engines, the railway would have a smaller diesel-fired engine for convenience. If one of the steam locomotives were to break down, the diesel could be used quickly to tow it, while it would take a long time to bring the other steam engine up to operating temperature.
The Baldwin engines were built for O'ahu Sugar in 1899 and 1911.
The Grove Farm Homestead Museum was started by an heir to the Grove Farm plantation that is now owned by AOL founder Steve Case but is not associated with Grove Farm Co. The museum has four locomotives, three of them operational. The oldest, Paulo, is the oldest working plantation locomotive in Hawai'i. All four — the 1887 Paulo, 1921 Wahiawa, 1925 Kaipu and 1915 Wainiha — were operated on Kaua'i sugar plantations.
The Grove Farm Homestead locomotives will not be able to run on the Kaua'i Plantation Railway line because the rails will be set different distances apart. Only on Kaua'i did narrow-gauge rails operate on a 30-inch gauge. The other islands had rails at 36 inches, and since the Kilohana engines are originally from O'ahu, they'll be 3 feet apart.
Schleck credits boiler engineer Matt Austin and rail-bed designer Scott Johnson for much of the work on the museum's train line. Kilohana railway partner Brook Rother, a West Coast railway contractor and locomotive rebuilder, is the primary technical consultant on its line.
Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 245-3074.
