The Kauai Plantation Railway currently operates a tourist train pulled by a 1939 Whitcomb diesel (see http://www.kauaiplantationrailway.com/), but also owns a pair of Baldwin steam locomotives; see:

http://steamlocomotive.info/vlocomotive ... play=21259
http://steamlocomotive.info/vlocomotive ... play=21182

These, at last report were in Georgetown, CA being restored to operational condition by Brook Rother. Is this accurate? Any recent news of them would be appreciated.

That Whitcomb is long gone, they sold it off a couple years ago. Current power is three GE 25-ton diesel electrics, two are operational and the third is a parts source. One of them arrived from the Georgetown Loop within the last year or two.

As to the steam locomotives, I seem to remember seeing something about them being available for sale within the last year or so. Could be wrong about that though.

If you visit, I can't recommend the train ride/hike/orchard tour/lunch package highly enough...we did it this past summer, it is a lot of fun and you learn a lot about the islands and their human and natural history.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

The Whitcomb went to Roaring Camp & Big Trees around 2010. Here is what I could find on the GEs:

29241 25T D/E B 36” 1/20/1948
Koppers Co., Denver, Colo
Private Owner, Calif
Kauai Plantation #10, Puhi, Kauai, Hawaii

29845 25T D/E B 36” 7/29/1948
US Steel, Carnegie-Illinois Steel Div #1.,Vandergrift, Pa
US Steel #1 > #54, South Chicago, Ill
Locomotive Marketing (D) /1985
Batesville White Lime, Batesville, Ark
Arkansas Lime, Batesville, Ark
Kauai Plantation #20, Puhi, Kauai, Hawaii

Grove Farm Plantation just south of Lihue, Kauai, is the repository of the remaining sugar locomotives on that island. They have a monthly steam-up with at least one locomotive. Here's the link to their website. Click on "Locomotives".
http://grovefarm.org/hawaii-trains/

Hi,



These two 0-6-2t plantation locos have been for sale for at least a decade or two. Barnhardt used to have them listed. I was in contact with someone who owns or knows who owns them earlier this year. All the parts for them are still in one place, but trucking them to northern CA caused a height problem. The tops of the cabs were sliced off and the stacks were sliced off (still available for welding back on).

They were to have been bought by the tourist railroad in Hawaii but they found out that the diesels could haul more cars than the two tea kettles.

Doug vV

By dumb luck I stumbled on them operating for a school group, as the one operating day happened to be the day we flew in. One thing their website did not make clear is that the railroad part of their operations is not on the main plantation grounds, I reserved a spot on one of their plantation tours only to find out it would not cover the railroad after I got there...but things worked out at the end. Two of their locomotives, the Paulo and one of the 0-6-2Ts are on the operation, the other two are in the old Grove Farms enginehouse a couple miles away.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

This thread is a little confusing. These are two separate operations. Kauai with the diesel excursion and Grove with the steam operations.

Kauai Plantation is a for-profit operation located at Gaylord's on the island of Kauai.

Grove Farm is the name of the Wilcox family home in Lihue, Kauai offering house tours. The Grove Farm railroad operation is a non-profit museum operation located near the sugar mill in Lihue. They are relatively close by each other, but not adjacent. The train is operated on the second Thursday of the month. The railway and the house are under the auspices of Waioli Corporation, a non-profit organization.

Link for Grove Farm: https://grovefarm.org/

Wesley

I will check things out when I am there this weekend-we're having dinner there on Christmas Day.

To add a little bit more to the conversation...

The operation behind the Kauai Plantation Railway leased the old Wilcox Estate (centered around a mansion built by a sugar magnate) in the 1980s and started developing it into a tourist destination, with their own luau operation, restaurants, a rum distillery, several shops, extensive orchards, and some other businesses. They added the three mile long 36" gauge railroad in 2007. Equipment is the three GE diesel electrics, five flatcars, and one four wheel hopper car. The flatcars originally worked on Oahu, then went to the White Pass & Yukon before the KPRY found them. KPRY sent four of the flatcars off to the Philippines to be rebuilt into passenger cars, three coaches and an open car. The fifth flat is in work service. Typical rides on this operation last about 40 minutes and include a stopover in their fields to feed their collection of farm animals. However, as I said in my earlier post, I cannot recommend the much longer hiking, lunch, and orchard tour highly enough. Their trains also play a role in their luau. The entire operation is very touristy and looks like a scaled up model railroad (which in almost all ways it is), but it is worth it.

On to Grove Farms. Grove at one time one of the major sugar cane growers on the island, but unlike most others they did not have their own mill and instead sold all of their cane to the Lihue Plantation Company. Grove eventually built its own rail system through its fields, purchased its own equipment, and started delivering cane to the Lihue mill, partially over Lihue’s railroad. Grove’s railroad remained in use until 1957, when the company eliminated it in favor of trucking their cane to the former Koloa Sugar Company mill in Koloa, which Grove purchased in 1948. At the end of its rail show Grove stashed four locomotives it had purchased through the years into their enginehouse at Puhi, which gradually became the base of operations for a trucking company in subsequent years.

In 1975, some descendants of the family that built Grove Farm donated their old plantation estate grounds, lying about a mile and a half from the Puhi enginehouse, to a foundation they set up, which today operates the facilities as a museum. The foundation also received the four locomotives as well, and by 1982 they restored three of them to operation. However, they were limited to operations over a couple hundred or so feet of track in the gravel parking lot of the trucking company. In the early 1980s the foundation purchased several acres of land located a half mile north of the plantation grounds and directly across the street from the old Lihue mill, mostly to protect it from development. The foundation quickly discovered it had about a mile of the Lihue company’s railroad grade on the property, along with some company housing developments, the base of the old railroad water tower, and other remnants of the Lihue railroad. They quickly came up with a new plan, and started clearing off and rebuilding the railroad. At present they have about 1,800 feet of 30" gauge track completed, along with a small shed to house the two locomotives moved up from Puhi. To haul passengers they built three reconstructed sugar cane cars and one flatcar. Locomotives on site are the the Paulo (Hohenzollern 2-4-0T, built 1887 in Germany new for the Koloa Sugar Company; operated on the Koloa railroad until replaced by more modern power in 1920, at which time Koloa placed it on display at their mill to Grove when they bought out Koloa in 1948; restored to operation in 1981) and the Wainiha (Baldwin 0-6-2T, built 1915 for McBryde Sugar Company on Kauai; to Lihue Plantation 1932; to Grove Farm 1947; Restored to operation 1975), plus a former Leslie Salt diesel owned by a friend of the railroad that is used to help switch things around. The other two locomotives (also Baldwin 0-6-2Ts) are in the old Grove enginehouse at Puhi and are not typically available for public visitation.

The foundation behind the Grove operation is in the process, or at least was this past summer, in seeking some grant and donation moneys to build what they are calling the "Locomotive Learning Park", which would involve rebuilding track on the remaining 4,000 feet of available Lihue Plantation grade, construction and reconstruction of several buildings, and establishment of numerous other displays to showcase its equipment and interpret the economic and social history of the sugar industry on the island.

One final note, the Lihue sugar mill is no more, judging by Google Earth it was torn down in 2012 and is now a badly overgrown concrete pad. Anyone who does find the railroad operation, be sure to check out the rails of the numerous spurs into the plant still embedded in the pavement of the road across the street from where the Grove trains board.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

A look at the satellite photos today shows a small farm museum surrounded by modern ranch house development. The driveway to the museum has a concrete rail crossing in it without connecting track. Is this old or new?

AFAIK the crossing is an old/original, but I might need to look at the old maps again.

Just to be clear, the Grove Farm museum is here:

https://goo.gl/maps/q7gXzQWqCfG2

The Grove Farm railroad operations are based out of here, note the remains of the old sugar mill on the north side of the road, the tracks run off to the east:

https://goo.gl/maps/xhWVu5gw4up

And the original Grove Farms original enginehouse, home to the "other" half of the museum's fleet plus some other sugar industry equipment, is in this building, located a little over a mile west of both the farm and the train ride- note the rails still in the parking lot:

https://goo.gl/maps/NiMvu4FhHbp

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

The photo of the old grade crossing reminds me when the family vacationed to Hawaii during the summer of 1966 (the summer I turned 17). Mother decided it was time to splurge for a vacation as it probably (it was) the last time the family would do a group vacation. After spending almost a week on Oahu we visited visited the islands of Hawaii, Maui and Kauai. I remember that when we drove the rental car from the Kauai airport to the Coco Palms resort we crossed over numerous grade crossings from the sugar plantation railway operations.

When staying in Honolulu (Waikiki Beach) my younger brother and I had a day to do our own thing. My brother went SCUBA diving and I wrote ahead and arranged to stop by the Dillingham office and was taken by a young PR man to the remnants of the Oahu railway still in place and in use within the harbor area.

P.S. Also remember seeing a grade crossing at Lahaina on Maui. Also on the way back to the airport on Maui I got the family to stop by the old Kahului Ry shop complex and got a couple of photos.