Post #760742 by Veronica! on Sun, Mar 13, 2016 8:29 AM

On 2016-03-09 20:32, Hakalugi wrote:

On 2016-03-09 20:21, EnchantedTikiGoth wrote:
...
You can always do a model of a Hawaii plantation train....

Sort of like this:

Photo by Joe Banks, found in the Manhattan Beach Fry's thread.

Yes. I rode Lahaina, Kaanapali and Pacific Railroad Sugar Cane Train. Exactly what I am thinking, too.

The locomotive and sugar cane wagons in the photograph are G gauge. And accurate depiction of plantation equipment. Koloa Sugar owned Paulo (Hohenzollern #426, 1887, Romania).

From Wikipedia: "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 in 1898, took the train from Waimea, on the coast, to the Kilauea Plantation’s Kekaha 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….[We] bowled 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."

Cute. Toy-like. No brakes, manual or Westinghouse. Description of tracks leaves impression of railroad in Our Hospitality.

So. Geared logging locomotives hopelessly too large. Also, possibly finding European version of link and pin couplers.

Cursory research very surprising. Lehmann Gross Bahn of Germany released two limited edition 0-4-2 Baldwin Hawaiian plantation locomotives, Chloe (originally Pokaa) and Olomana. LGB scheduled to reintroduce sugar cane wagons Spring 2016.

Uncertain of existence of bonsai palm trees. Which would require wintering indoors.

The photograph brought back fond memories of assisting nieces and nephews with volcano dioramas. The youngest proved most challenging. She does not care for science. She is tea-party-with-dolls type. As completion neared, she began building huts. There are tribes on undiscovered islands in the Pacific with no previous outside contact who knew what was coming next. Girls to live in the huts. Specifically AKB48.

I was proven wrong. Island inhabited by AKB48. And white kitties with pink bows.

Somehow was awarded an A+. So. My third grade science project record remains intact.

The game is afoot! Cherchez la tiki!