Re: Development

Hi John, you pretty much summed it up. The sugar mill is gone, and he sugar cane is gone - only rocky dirt where the sugar cane used to be. so no more sugar for the Sugar Cane Train. And yes, there is more real estate development going on around the railroad all the time.

Ridership has gone way down over the years. As you said above, the railroad was sold several times in the last few years, finally being bought by a husband and wife from Nebraska. They tried to run it on a shoestring, being able to afford only the most critical maintenance. My good friend Stan Sosna, the first shop employee I hired when I started in 1985, was still there last time I stopped in, about a year ago. He had been nearly single-handedly keeping it together for the last 10 years - with almost 30 years total service! The day I visited, he had several maintenance operations going at once, including flushing the air pump on one of the engines with lye. The guy is a real wizard, but no one can keep a railroad going that way forever. He told me that no one in Maui seemed to be interested in learning steam locomotive or railroad maintenance any more. He also said at that time that he had given the owners notice that he was going to retire in 6 months. So that may have something to do with the timing of the shutdown.