Heritage railways in Kauai
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There are two heritage railways in Kauai, the birthplace of Hawaiian railroading. It was added to the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
on January 19, 1979. The Grove Farm Sugar Plantation Museum preserved original
steam locomotives A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...
from the earliest days of rail transport in
Kauai Kauai, () anglicized as Kauai ( ), is geologically the second-oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands (after Niʻihau). With an area of 562.3 square miles (1,456.4 km2), it is the fourth-largest of these islands and the 21st largest island ...
, restoring the small-gauge engines without much notice beyond the local community. The museum acquired property where historic right-of-ways had run, and found, in the thick vegetation,
track bed The track bed or trackbed is the groundwork onto which a railway track is laid. Trackbeds of disused railways are sometimes used for recreational paths or new light rail links. According to Network Rail, the trackbed is the layers of ballast a ...
s ready for restoration, allowing the Museum to display their authentic, working locomotives. The second
heritage railway A heritage railway or heritage railroad (US usage) is a railway operated as living history to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period (or periods) i ...
in Kauai is the Kauai Plantation Railway at Kilohana. Unlike the Grove Farm Museum trains, which are brought out only once a month, the Kauai Plantation Railway is a daily fee-based attraction.


Context of Kauai’s railroading origins

Sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with ...
plantations in Hawaii led to the introduction of railways to Hawaii. Rail transport in Hawaii began in the late 19th century when small-gauge locomotives were brought in to replace oxen or horses to haul harvested sugarcane from the fields to mills, and then to transport the raw sugar to docks for shipment to refineries in
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
. Hawaii's first commercial sugar plantation was created in
Koloa Kōloa is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Kauai County, Hawaii, United States. The population was 2,231 at the 2020 census, up from 1,942 at the 2000 census. The first successful sugarcane plantation in the Hawa ...
, Kauai in 1835, and sugar rapidly grew to dominate Kauai's economy—and the economy of the Hawaiian archipelago—through the 19th and 20th centuries; railways were but one of several innovations introduced to Kauai to increase efficiency and capitalize on available resources during the 19th century. For example, steam plows were used by around the middle of the century, and abundant electricity was generated from mountain streams both to power mills and illuminate the fields for 24-hour shifts as early as 1885. Kauai's early leadership in rail transport in Hawaii is consistent with this tradition of innovation.


Hawaii’s first railways

Railways were under construction in both Kauai and on
Hawaii island Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii ) is the largest island in the United States, located in the state of Hawaii. It is the southeasternmost of the Hawaiian Islands, a chain of volcanic islands in the North Pacific Ocean. With an area of , it has 63% of t ...
at about the same time in 1881.


Kauai's first railway

In Kauai, the Kilauea Sugar Plantation purchased a steam locomotive from
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and created
narrow gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter curves, smaller structu ...
tracks through the sugarcane fields. The first spike in this track was driven by Princess Liliuokalani, then Regent and soon to assume the throne as last Queen of the
Kingdom of Hawaii The Hawaiian Kingdom, or Kingdom of Hawaiʻi ( Hawaiian: ''Ko Hawaiʻi Pae ʻĀina''), was a sovereign state located in the Hawaiian Islands. The country was formed in 1795, when the warrior chief Kamehameha the Great, of the independent island ...
. She had arrived the day before, disembarking at Hanalei, a nearby port, and was invited to the September 24 ceremonial opening at the site of what is now the town of Kilauea. The assembled dignitaries included Governor Paul P. Kanoe and the Plantation Manager, Robert A. Macfie, Jr. This is often credited as Hawaii's first railway. While field railways ran on “literally little more than panels of snap-track laid and re-laid across the fields as the seasonal cutting progressed,” more permanent right-of-ways were soon established to provide freight and passenger service from mills to ports, where raw sugar was packed aboard ocean-going ships bound for California refineries. An engineer, sent to Kauai from
Honolulu Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island ...
in 1898, took the train from Waimea, on the coast, to the Kilauea Plantation's
Kekaha Kekaha (literally, "the place" in Hawaiian) is a census-designated place (CDP) in Kauai County, Hawaii, United States. The population was 3,715 at the 2020 census, up from 3,175 at the 2000 census. History For most of the 20th century, the Ke ...
mill, situated in the midst of the cane fields, and he described the trip:
The railroad is a cute affair, only 30 inch gauge—cars mostly flat for hauling cane and sugar in bags….All cars are no more than 4 feet wide….Engines… are regular toys—they weigh about eight tons…. ebowled over the four miles of toy railroad to the headquarters of the Plantation….They have engineer ''only''—no fireman—no breakman. No ''breaks'' on cars.


First railway on the Big Island

On
Hawaii island Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii ) is the largest island in the United States, located in the state of Hawaii. It is the southeasternmost of the Hawaiian Islands, a chain of volcanic islands in the North Pacific Ocean. With an area of , it has 63% of t ...
(known as the Big Island), a larger railway was also under construction, with the first tracks being laid in March 1881 in
Māhukona Māhukona is a submerged shield volcano on the northwestern flank of the Island of Hawaii. A drowned coral reef at about 3,770 feet (-1,150 m) below sea level and a major break in slope at about 4,400 feet (-1,340 m) below sea level represent ol ...
, North Kohala; its official charter of Incorporation under the name of The Hawaiian Railroad Company was granted in July 1880. The ''Hawaiian Gazette'' reported that of track had been laid in September 1881, but its unofficial opening was in March 1882. ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', however, reported that the first steam railway was to be built on the Big Island in 1899, which may be a misunderstanding based on financial reorganization of the existing railways.


Initial railways in Oahu and Maui

The ''Hawaiian Gazette'', in the same 1882 issue that it mentions the initial freight hauling by steam on the Big Island, also states that on
Maui The island of Maui (; Hawaiian: ) is the second-largest of the islands of the state of Hawaii at 727.2 square miles (1,883 km2) and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is the largest of Maui County's four islands, which ...
, the “Kahului railroad has met all the requirements for transporting freight.” Although one source claims that
Oahu Oahu () (Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ''Oʻahu'' ()), also known as "The Gathering place#Island of Oʻahu as The Gathering Place, Gathering Place", is the third-largest of the Hawaiian Islands. It is home to roughly one million people—over t ...
did not enter the railway age until 1889, it appears that Oahu had a field railway using the engine Olomana in 1883.


Grove Farm Plantation

The preservation of steam locomotives on Kauai is largely due to the Grove Farm Sugar Plantation Museum, led by Mabel and Elsie Wilcox, nieces of George Norton Wilcox, who bought Grove Farm Plantation in 1864. The sisters fought to preserve the trains when the Koloa Plantation was taken over by Grove Farm Plantation in 1947 and later when the trains were taken out of service in the late 1950s. About 1970, the trains were almost sold to the
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for $500 each, when Mabel Wilcox matched the price and kept the locomotives in Kauai. When Mabel Wilcox turned the Plantation she had inherited into the Grove Farm Museum in the 1970s, the four gauge locomotives were given to the museum. When she died in 1978, her estate included an endowment for the operations of the Museum, including the locomotives. They are currently listed in the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
as Grove Farm Company Locomotives. The collection includes four locomotives, all of which saw extensive service on Kauai.


Paulo

Pride of place in the Grove Farm Museum locomotive collection is one of the earliest steam locomotives in Kauai, an 1887
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steam engine built in
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, Germany for the Koloa Plantation for $4,000, which arrived in 1888. This engine is also notable because it is today the oldest steam locomotive in the state of Hawaii currently being run on rails; it pre-dates all steam locomotives in the State, in any condition, except for two: one is a gauge Baldwin Locomotive from 1883 that is said to be buried in a sand dune in Puunene, on the island of Maui; the other is the Claus Spreckels, dating from 1882, originally a coal-fired engine later converted to oil, which is in storage in Maui in operational condition. At one time, it was thought the first locomotive on Kauai was this 1887 engine. It is a wood-fired side-tank locomotive weighing some 10 tons and has a gauge. This engine is named Paulo, a tribute to
Paul Isenberg Paul Isenberg (April 15, 1837 – January 16, 1903) was a German businessman who developed the sugarcane business in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Life Paul Heinrich Friedrich Carl Isenberg was born April 15, 1837, in Dransfeld, Kingdom of Hanover, G ...
, a wealthy sugar planter in the 1880s. Paul Isenberg spent many years in Kauai, arriving in 1858 and by 1862, at age 25, was manager of the Lihue Plantation, the second oldest plantation after Koloa. He greatly expanded the plantation and also was a partner in the Koloa sugar mill and the Kekaha sugar mill. He returned to his native Germany in 1878, leaving his brother Carl to assume his responsibilities at Lihue Plantation. Paul remained active in the business, however, and arranged for the immigration of 124 people from Germany to Kauai. The Paulo engine was shipped from Germany in 1887 to Koloa Plantation. Carl Isenberg started the Lihue Plantation Railway in 1891. The Paulo engine remained in active service hauling cane until 1920, when it was retired and put on display by the Koloa Sugar Plantation. Grove Farm Plantation bought the Koloa Sugar Plantation in 1947, and Paulo became property of Grove Farm. Paulo was restored to full operating condition in 1981 after years of preservation work by the Grove Farm Museum and a team of volunteers led by Scott Johnson, who maintains the Grove Farm collection. Johnson grew up on Maui and has worked on almost every steam engine in the state. The Grove Farm Museum locomotives are displayed at the Lihue Plantation Sugar Mill site and run on a revived section of the Lihue Plantation Railroad once a month and on special occasions such as Ohana Day (‘ohana’ translates as ‘family’) in 2010 with the opening of the Kauai Museum exhibition, ‘The Industrial Revolution on Kaua‘i: Steam Power and Other Innovations’. In addition, the museum reconstructed a flat car and a cane car, and has two replicas with benches for passengers.


Wainiha

The Wainiha, a 1915 locomotive from the
Baldwin Locomotive Works The Baldwin Locomotive Works (BLW) was an American manufacturer of railroad locomotives from 1825 to 1951. Originally located in Philadelphia, it moved to nearby Eddystone, Pennsylvania, in the early 20th century. The company was for decades t ...
in
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, was originally owned by the McBryde Plantation, and was sold to the Lihue Plantation in 1932. The McBride Plantation introduced two electric locomotives to its operations prior to 1899, when it added two steam engines. Grove Farm Company acquired the Wainiha, named for a stream and valley on Kauai's north shore, in 1957, and it was the last steam locomotive in service for the sugar industry in Hawaii. It is operational, having been restored in 1975. In 2000, the Wainiha was used in filming a
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drama, ''
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'', to portray a Japanese train transporting British prisoners of war. The Paulo engine also was in the film.


Wahiawa

The Wahiawa, also from Baldwin, was designed primarily to pull a passenger train in 1921 for the
Kauai Railway The Kauai Railway is a former narrow gauge railway company in Hawaii, United States. It was created 1906 and operated a long railroad line with Narrow gauge railway, narrow gauge track from Port Allen, Hawaii, Port Allen, to Koloa and Kalaheo on ...
Company. Its name was originally Port Allen, after the harbor on the western shore of Kauai and the terminus of that rail line. The engine passed through the hands of the McBryde Sugar Company in 1938 when it acquired its present name, after a stream in west Kauai, and in 1947 was sold to Grove Farm Company. Restoration of this engine is on-going as funds allow.


Kaipu

The Kaipu, a 1925 engine, also from Baldwin, was one of the last locomotives built for the Hawaiian sugarcane industry. Originally named the Kokee by its first owner, the Hawaiian Sugar Company, it was renamed for one of the plantation's lunas, or foremen, in 1941 when acquired by Grove Farm. This unusual engine has a steel cab, with driving wheels smaller than the other Kauai Baldwins, and external counterweights with main rods connected to the rear drivers. It was retired in 1953, restored in 1983, and is operational.


Historic Right-of-Ways

In 2004, Grove Farm Museum locomotives began rolling on a short stretch of historic, gauge Lihue Plantation Railroad right-of-way from the Lihue sugar mill to Grove Farm Plantation, along Haleko Road, near the center of modern
Lihue Lihue or Līhue is an unincorporated community, census-designated place (CDP) and the county seat of Kauai County, Hawaii, United States. Lihue (pronounced ) is the second largest town on the Hawaiian island of Kauai after Kapaa. As of the 2010 ...
. Haleko Road was originally known as Halekoa, or “house of cane” Road. This right-of-way was unknown when the Grove Farm Museum purchased from Lihue Plantation Company and another from
William Hyde Rice William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...
Ltd. to provide a buffer from development in the area. Only later did the Grove Farm Museum officials discover that the right-of-way for the Lihue Plantation passed through the newly purchased plot, and restored the disused track bed.


Kauai Plantation Railway

The Kauai Plantation Railway opened for business in January 2007 as “the first new railroad to be built in Hawaii in 100 years.” Indirectly, both the Grove Farm and Kauai Plantation heritage railways share common ancestry. Kauai Plantation Railway offers a tour of Kilohana, the former estate of Gaylord Parke Wilcox (1881–1970), manager of Grove Farm Plantation. His sister, Mabel Wilcox, heir to much of the Wilcox fortune, created Grove Farm Museum from her former family homestead nearby. They were grandchildren of missionary Abner Wilcox (1808–1869), with the fortune grown by their uncles George Norton Wilcox (1839–1933) and
Albert Spencer Wilcox Albert Spencer Wilcox (May 24, 1844 – July 7, 1919) was a businessman and politician in the Kingdom of Hawaii and Republic of Hawaii. He developed several sugar plantations in Hawaii, and became a large landholder. Early life Albert Spence ...
(1844–1919).


Vintage elements in a modern reconstruction

The Kauai Plantation Railway follows a loop through agricultural displays on the historic Kilohana estate and plantation. The Kauai Plantation Railway was designed by Boone Morrison, a historic restoration architect. Its rolling stock is new, but carefully modeled after passenger cars of 1880s trains that operated on the Big Island of Hawaii. The railway has both enclosed coaches and a coach with open sides. The coaches sit on six flatcars originally built in 1941 at
Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Re ...
by the U.S. Navy, which were then used by the
Oahu Railway and Land Company The Oahu Railway and Land Company, or OR&L, was a narrow gauge common carrier railway that served much of the Hawaiian island of Oahu, and was the largest narrow gauge class one common carrier in the U.S, until its dissolution in 1947. Origin T ...
and afterwards sold to
White Pass and Yukon Route The White Pass and Yukon Route (WP&Y, WP&YR) is a Canadian and U.S. Class III narrow-gauge railroad linking the port of Skagway, Alaska, with Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon. An isolated system, it has no direct connection to any other railr ...
in Alaska. The original plan for the railway called for steam engines to pull the coaches, with diesel engines in reserve. The railway opened under the power of a 1948 diesel-electric end-cab two-axle General Electric locomotive, however, with a 1939 two-axle Whitcomb diesel-mechanical locomotive providing backup. Steam locomotives are scheduled to take over from the diesel engines when renovation of a pair of Baldwin outside-frame 0-6-2 tank engines is complete. These steam engines had originally worked at the Honolulu Plantation Company on
Oahu Oahu () (Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ''Oʻahu'' ()), also known as "The Gathering place#Island of Oʻahu as The Gathering Place, Gathering Place", is the third-largest of the Hawaiian Islands. It is home to roughly one million people—over t ...
prior to World War II. They were purchased for the Kauai Plantation Railway from a company in the
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where they had been in service until 2001. The trains run on rails salvaged from a
Soo Line Railroad The Soo Line Railroad is the primary United States railroad subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway , one of seven U.S. Class I railroads, controlled through the Soo Line Corporation. Although it is named for the Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sa ...
branch in
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. Most of its 31,680 spikes were driven by hand with 11-pound mauls. The Kauai Plantation Railway is gauge, which has no historical precedent in Kauai; most of the previous railways were smaller gauge. The route passes a estate home built in 1935 for Gaylord Wilcox. In more recent times, the Kilohana Plantation, has been devoted to preserving the island's plantation-era heritage and interpreting it for both locals and tourists. The Kauai Plantation Railway is an outgrowth of this activity, which included horse-drawn carriage rides on the estate. The train passes plots leased by farmers who grow a wide variety of crops, from the culturally important
taro Taro () (''Colocasia esculenta)'' is a root vegetable. It is the most widely cultivated species of several plants in the family Araceae that are used as vegetables for their corms, leaves, and petioles. Taro corms are a food staple in Africa ...
to
pineapple The pineapple (''Ananas comosus'') is a tropical plant with an edible fruit; it is the most economically significant plant in the family Bromeliaceae. The pineapple is indigenous to South America, where it has been cultivated for many centuri ...
,
papaya The papaya (, ), papaw, () or pawpaw () is the plant species ''Carica papaya'', one of the 21 accepted species in the genus ''Carica'' of the family Caricaceae. It was first domesticated in Mesoamerica, within modern-day southern Mexico and ...
,
rambutan Rambutan (; taxonomic name: ''Nephelium lappaceum'') is a medium-sized tropical tree in the family Sapindaceae. The name also refers to the edible fruit produced by this tree. The rambutan is native to Southeast Asia. It is closely related to s ...
, tropical hardwood trees,
tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...
, and
coffee Coffee is a drink prepared from roasted coffee beans. Darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic, coffee has a stimulant, stimulating effect on humans, primarily due to its caffeine content. It is the most popular hot drink in the world. S ...
, a more recent cash crop in Kauai. The idea is to show the future of Kauai's agricultural industry in its rich historic and cultural context. It is located at , just off
Route 50 The following highways are numbered 50: International * European route E50 Brazil * BR-050 Canada * Alberta Highway 50 * Manitoba Highway 50 * Newfoundland and Labrador Route 50 * Ontario Highway 50 (Also referred to as Peel Regional Road 50 ...
.


End of an era

Over of mostly gauge track existed in 1915 in Kauai. By 1959, Kauai railroads were replaced by trucks. Today, even the trucks are gone, and the last sugar plantation on Kauai, Gay & Robinson, processed its last crop in October 2009.


See also

* *
List of heritage railroads in the United States This is a list of heritage railroads in the United States. There are currently no such railroads in the states of Mississippi or North Dakota. Heritage railroads by state Alabama * Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum, Shelby & Southern Railroad and ...
* Ahukini Terminal and Railway Company *
Kauai Railway The Kauai Railway is a former narrow gauge railway company in Hawaii, United States. It was created 1906 and operated a long railroad line with Narrow gauge railway, narrow gauge track from Port Allen, Hawaii, Port Allen, to Koloa and Kalaheo on ...
* List of Hawaii railroads


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heritage Railways In Kauai
Kauai Kauai, () anglicized as Kauai ( ), is geologically the second-oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands (after Niʻihau). With an area of 562.3 square miles (1,456.4 km2), it is the fourth-largest of these islands and the 21st largest island ...
Transportation in Kauai County, Hawaii National Register of Historic Places in Kauai County, Hawaii 2 ft 6 in gauge railways in Hawaii Defunct Hawaii railroads Tourist attractions in Kauai County, Hawaii Railway locomotives on the National Register of Historic Places Rail transportation on the National Register of Historic Places in Hawaii Transportation museums in Hawaii Railroad museums in the United States