Paauhau Sugar Plantation Company 0-4-2 Locomotives in the USA

Class 8 (Locobase 11543)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University Volume 26, p. 123. Works number 22760 in August 1903

Sold to W F Irwin & Company, this little tank was one of two that pulled trains assembled from the 250 cane cars they had available on the 15 miles of plantation railway. It served the lower levels of the plantation. It was a larger tank than the two described in Locobase 11602.

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Class Fannie (Locobase 11602)

Data from Baldwin Locomotive Works Specification for Engines, 1903, as digitized by the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University Vol 26, p. 123. Works numbers were 9907 in March 1889 and 11900 in May 1891. See [] and [] for accounts of these sugar company operations. See also Prosper Quentin Tomich, "Sugar Plantations and their Railroad Era, 1879-1947", Hawaii: Perspectives on Hamakua History, (self-published, 2008, ISBN 978-0-615-25676-4), pp. 92-94.

These two tanks -- Fannie and Doctor -- were bought in different years by W. G. Irwin for two different sugar plantations. Fannie operated for Paauhau, Doctor (the 1891 engine) was run by Ookala Sugar Company, which later went bankrupt in 1909 and reorganized as Kaiwiki Plantation.

Paauhau is located about 50 miles from the Big Island's capital of Hilo on its northeast coast.

Sold to The University of Hawaii site explains that many of the cars used gravity to run to and from the mill: "Cane was collected on wagons and lifted by derrick to the tramcars. Double tracks extended for a mile down the slope. The loaded car traveled by gravity to the mill on one track and cable connections drew the empty cars back to the fields on the other track. The plantation eventually had five of these tramways in operation, each having the capacity of delivering 300 tons of cane in ten hours."

Prosper Tomich reported that Fannie was retired in 1920 as too expensive to repaire, but unretired in 1937 when Manuel Rapozo, who worked in the Paauhau's machine shop, and an assistant converted her to gasoline power using a Ford V8 engine.

She remained in use until the railway was closed in 1945. Even her apparent demise broke the usual mold. Instead of suffering dissection by welder's torch, Fannie was "pushed ...over the edge of Kawaili'ili'i Gulch near the mill, " says Tomich. "She may still be there, hung up among trees that arrested the intended fall of about 200 feet to the streambed."