Rob Dickinson is reporting the following from his "International Working Steam Locomotives" website:

***

Philippines

Sad news for me as a two time visitor is the news that Hawaiian Philippine have their 3ft gauge roster for sale. I received the following email (24th April 2003) "We are a company in the Philippines operating at least 8 steam locomotives, mostly built by Baldwin Locomotive Works, Philadelphia, Pa, USA. Some are still operational, and others need only minor repairs. I would like to inquire if anybody is still interested to buy these machines. I could provide each of the equipment specifications if somebody is interested. Thank you." Point of contact is J Cristales, email jlcristales@hpcosugar.com. I need hardly mention that these are highly desirable beasts!

***

These steam locomotives are located on the Phillipine island of Negros. This island has long been famous with it's working sugar and lumber locomotives; the Hawii Philippine Sugar Mill was the last one on the island still operating steam locomotives.

If you are not familiar with their roster, the link below will show photographs of them from the Rob's 1998 trip. They were also featured in Colin Garratt's books of world steam photography, and one or two other books in my library. I also linked to one of his pictures below from his website.

I hope these can be repatriated back the USA; they would make a great roster for a small museum or park train operation. I have no idea what standard they were maintained to, but they always externally looked better than the equally photographed rolling wrecks at Insular Lumber and some of the other mills on the island.

-James Hefner
Hebrews 10:20a

Steam in Negros

james1@pernet.net

TJ, might want to make a phone call or two.

dave

irondave@bellsouth.net

> TJ, might want to make a phone call or two.

> dave

I'm on it. Also, this might be right for a certain narrow gauge operation just to the west of me; Marty are you out there?

TJ


Port Huron Museum
tjgaffney@phmuseum.org

I recently spoke with a guy who had put a lot of money on a locomotive in the Philippines to bring to the USA. The short story is they took the money and ran. Also he said when he inspected one of the locomitves, it's firebox was a piece of scrap iron.

Let the buyer be VERY BEWARE.

Back in the 80's there was a wonderful PBS documentary on this line called "The Dragons of Sugar Island." I have a copy of it, not sure if still available, it also highlighted several other operation and showed a derailment and a large narrow gauge shay with a beautiful 6 chime whistle on it. The star of the program is "Dragon #6". The bagas fuel is very interesting and in a nice night time scene she looks like she is spitting fire into the night air.

jeff@CompuComIS.net