I will be interesting to see what the ultimate fate of the LK&P is. It is the only former Kyle excursion RR that was folded into the StatesRail purchase of Kyle in 1997. They kept it because it was highly profitable, not because it was a "steam train". StatesRail was bought by RailAmerica and it is thier only tourist railroad - let alone STEAM tourist RR.
When I visited it a couple of year back, business had pretty much tanked. The Japanese tourist biz had vaporized. The Japanese is what made that place a money printer. When I worked there as a temp in 1987-88 the place was swamped with busloads of passengers. We ran 5 trips a day and we hustled and ran as hard as we could to keep up. NOw they have 4 trips a day, shuffle along at 8 mph and there were all of 30 people on the afternoon trip I rode. Eventually Kyle built a second trainset and a passing siding in the middle of the line to run two trains at the same time when needed. They engineered a trade with Traveltown to get the 85 and an Oahu Sugar 0-6-2T for a diesel from Kyle's California Western. The idea was to get both engines rebuilt to run more trains. Once Kyle disappeared, corporate interest in the LK&P has waned, business was lost, now there is no need for the extra capacity, let alone more capacity.
I guess is RA doesn't know what to do with it. It is too far from downtown to walk (we came in by cruise ship and took a cab) and no one knows its even there. There was no info on ship or in town. They used to have a double decker London bus that cruised downtown Lahaina picking up passengers and that seemed to draw a bunch of walkin traffic, but they don't do that any more.
When I was working there I recall hearing the ROW was leased from Amfac corporation - who developed most of west Maui - and there was serious doubt they would renew the lease the the ROW was worth a huge amount of $$$ now as compared to back in 1970. I don't recall when the lease expires, but it is probably in the not too distant future.
