KOLOA — Grove Farm Homestead Museum’s historic locomotive Paulo now has a starring movie role to its long list of accomplishments. The 10-ton wood-burner and the 28-ton diesel-burning locomotive Wainiha were hauled by truck from the museum’s locomotive warehouse in
KOLOA — Grove Farm Homestead Museum’s historic locomotive Paulo now has a
starring movie role to its long list of accomplishments.
The 10-ton
wood-burner and the 28-ton diesel-burning locomotive Wainiha were hauled by
truck from the museum’s locomotive warehouse in Puhi to the Koloa side of
Wilcox Tunnel for their key roles in the film “To End All Wars.”
The
filming took place on Monday and Tuesday and required careful coordination
between filmmakers, a crew from the museum led by museum director Bob
Schleck, and the veteran housemoving crew of Kikiaola Land Co. under the
direction of Mike Fayé.
Schleck said David Cunningham, the director
of “To End All Wars,” spoke before the Grove Farm Homestead Museum board to
request use of the historic locomotives.
“The board felt it was important
to help the community through the making of this film,” Schleck said.
The
locomotives made it to and from the remote location with little or no damage,
Schleck said, praising the work of the Kikiaola crew and others involved in the
transfer.
The locomotives, and a set of train cars, were temporarily
disguised as Japanese Army trains for location filming of the new Kaua’i-made
movie.
“It was fun to see them in the wild,” said Schleck.
The train
moving work involved hauling 41 tons of equipment from Puhi to the remote Koloa
valley atop large truck trailers.
Track for the movie run of the
locomotives was loaned by the Hawaiian Railroad Society on O’ahu. The track has
been gathered over the years from the old mainline of the Oahu Railway, a route
that ran from downtown Honolulu along the Leeward side of O’ahu to the North
Shore.
“They had 24 lengths of rail, 360 feet of 70 pound rail,” said Scott
Johnson. “We laid the rail and spiked it down.” Railroad ties to support the
track came from the Mainland.
Johnson is a self-proclaimed “trainaholic,”
whose love of trains dates back to his early childhood. He has served as a
railroad supervisor for Grove Farm Homestead Museum since 1982 on projects
involving the museum’s classic set of sugar cane locomotives. They are four in
all, he said, including the Kaipu and unrestored Wahiawa.
The locomotives
are on the National Registry, and the museum’s primary focus is their historic
preservation and use in education, he said.
The restored sugar cane train
steam locomotive is as old as the film industry. When the 10-ton Hohenzollern
engine rolled out of the factory in Dusseldorf, Germany in 1887 inventor Thomas
Edison was pioneering the basic inventions that enable moving pictures to be
filmed and projected.
Along the way Paulo served Koloa Plantation and Grove
Farm Plantation, hauling 30-inch gauge flat car loads of sugar from plantation
fields to mill.
The locomotive cost $4,000 new and was named in honor of
Paul Isenberg, President of Koloa Sugar and a Germany-born pioneer in the
Kaua’i sugar industry.
“Paulo is one of the first two engines to come to
Kaua’i,” said Johnson, who lives in Wailua. “She spent a year on a sailing
ship to come here, and arrived in 1888 at Koloa Landing. She was brought ashore
in pieces, put together then driven away.”
Johnson said the support of Miss
Mabel Wilcox, the niece of Grove Farm Plantation owner G. N. Wilcox, is why
Kaua’i still has operating sugar cane locomotives. Years after the end of the
sugar train era Miss Mabel convinced the Grove Farm board to purchase the aging
locomotives with hopes of putting them on display. After the acquisition
engineers informed her the trains could also be run without major modifications
and it was decided to run them, too.
Schleck, director of the Grove Farm
Homestead Museum, said Disney was interested in purchasing the
locomotives.
The first sugar cane train operated at Kilauea Plantation in
1881. The colorful trains were gradually replaced with cane haul trucks, with
the trend becoming common in the post-World War II era. The last working trains
ran out of Lihue Plantation in the late 1950s.
Johnson said Wilcox Tunnel
was never used for cane trains, though it is commonly believed it was. He said
a small, 18-inch gauge mining train was used in digging out the tunnel.
However, the main purpose of the tunnel, which was dug in the late 1940s, was
to allow cane haul trucks to bring sugar from Grove Farm’s fields to the Koloa
Mill.
“She and a sister engine built the Waita reservoir, the largest
surface area man-made reservoir in the state,” he said, noting that Paulo was
returning again to Waita, which was used as a backdrop for the movie set at
Wilcox Tunnel.
“The most enjoyable part of the filming was sitting on Paulo
and look down on Waita Reservoir,” Johnson said.
The Wainiha was named
after the North Shore valley, and built in 1912. It’s first name was Port
Allen. The 28-ton locomotive was ordered by C. Brewer Co. for Alexander &
Baldwin, and was originally used by the Kauai Railway Co., the main commercial
train line on the West Side.
The locomotive was sold to Lihue Plantation in
1932 for $2,750 and renamed Wainiha. At the tail end of her career she was sold
to Grove Farm.
The larger locomotive has a tie to the World War II
era.
“Wainiha had a new boiler ordered for her in 1941, but the boiler
didn’t arrive until 1943, because of the attack on Pearl Harbor,” Johnson said.
“It’s fitting she’s in the movie. She was the last steam locomotive to haul a
load of sugar cane in the state.”
Johnson said he served as “engineer,
chief cook and bottle washer” in bringing the two locomotives to life for the
film.
Schleck joined Johnson and Harold Rosa, the supervisor of Grove
Farm’s railroad collection, in trucking and setting up the trains at the remote
location.
Their work was no cakewalk, Johnson said. “I worked 38 hours in
four days for prep work, spent a 12-hour day moving the train, and worked 37.5
hours on set during filming.”
The good news was that it only took 10 hours
to take the trains back home again, he said.
The makeup artists of “To End
All Wars” camouflaged Johnson so he could drive the train during the filming.
He became a mud streaked Japanese railroad engineer.
The makeover was
apparently effective.
“I walked past one of the assistant directors,”
Johnson said, “and he came back and asked me where’s Scott!”
“They were
overall pretty pleased with the locomotives,” Johnson said of the reaction of
the filmmakers following filming. “We weren’t able to make enough steam as they
wanted, they were quite pleased with performance of engines.”
Johnson said
film director Cunningham and his crew was ecstatic when they found out there
were historic train locomotives on Kaua’i.
He said only cosmetic changes
to the looks of the locomotives were needed for the filming.
“They did
nothing to Paulo but take its name plates off,” Johnson said.
“They took
off the Wainiha name plate, raised the lantern to give it the look of a
Japanese train.”
“I saw a couple of photographs of the original engines
(used by the Japanese in Thailand),” Johnson said. “They’re close. Most people,
unless they’re real train buffs, won’t notice.”
Looking back on his
experience, Johnson said he was touched by the spirit of the film, and hoped
its message will held end horrific wartime abuses as pictured in “To End All
Wars.”
To see more photos of the filming, log on
to:
www.toendallwars.com
