Train Day stokes Oregonian’s fire

LIHU‘E — While the nation celebrated the Third Annual National Train Day in May, the Grove Farm Homestead Museum celebrates Train Day on almost every second Thursday of each month.

The national event was deemed a huge success, according to the National Train Day website, proclaiming “we are a train nation.”

Similarly, Thursday’s event drew a steady stream of people, residents and visitors alike, said Scott Johnson, the engineer for the Grove Farm Homestead Museum.

“We had a full load early. We have another load, and another load after that,” Johnson said, out of breath from providing passengers with historical anecdotes and answering questions.

But Lloyd Palmer wasn’t one asking questions of Johnson.

Instead, the visitor from Walport, Ore. was in deep conversation with Rick Burrell of Wailua, the discussion centering around the former Kilauea bridge which was once a railway bridge before the advent of motor vehicles.

Once cars began multiplying on roads, the rail was lowered in favor of cars using the bridge, and only recently, the bridge was demolished and replaced with a new bridge.

“We’re foamers,” Palmer said. “When I first started coming here in 1988 I said I wasn’t going to have anything to do with trains. For the first 15 years, I was OK, doing all the stuff tourists do, but in 2004, I met Burrell and it was all over. You talk about trains and we start foaming at the mouth and get all excited. We’re just foamers.”

Burrell, who grew up around the last of the sugar-cane locomotives, has been taking Palmer to various areas on the island to inspect former railways, his collection of material filling a binder to near-capacity with more information added nearly daily.

Palmer’s annual visits always brings him to the Train Day, where he adds to his collection of material on trains in Hawai‘i.

“This is not just a train ride,” Palmer said. “It’s a part of history. The locomotive was built in 1887 and they had to bring it by parts in rowboats and assemble it on land. The locomotive is still running today on rails on Grove Farm right of ways. This is part of railroad history.”

A Grove Farm flier states the locomotive Paulo is the oldest surviving plantation locomotive in Hawai‘i.

It was manufactured in Dusseldorf, Germany in 1887 at the Hohenzollen Works and shipped to the Koloa Sugar Company, the first commercial sugar plantation in the kingdom of Hawai‘i, where it was in use until 1920.

It was named for Paul Isenberg, the owner of Lihu‘e Plantation and an officer of Koloa Sugar Co.

For more information on the train and tours, call 245-3202.