Rarotonga Steam Railway

The Rarotonga Steam Railway was a short tourist railway on Rarotonga in the Cook Islands.^[1]

History

Avarua. Tracks on the wharf around 1914. Photo by George Crummer.

Around 1914 the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand had railway tracks in Avarua's wharf.

Locomotive Px48-1919 in Poland, Stare Bojanowo

There was no railway line in operation on the Cook Islands until the beginning of the 1990s. In 1991 or 1992 a resident of Rarotonga, Tim Arnold, a descendant of Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, purchased a working steam locomotive in Poland and brought it to Avarua.^[2] It was a 750 mm (2 ft 5+1⁄2 in) gauge Polish 0-8-0. In Poland, it was Px48 [de]-1741.^[2] It had been built in 1951 by the Pierwsza Fabryka Lokomotyw w Polsce Fablok in Chrzanów, Poland, with the serial number 2126,^[3] and used on the local railways in Krośniewice, Kaliska and Żuławska. Arnold laid about 170 metres of track on his family property.^[4]

The railway is in need of repair, and no longer in working condition. The locomotive and other equipment are stored on the island awaiting possible further use. There is a proposal to transfer the locomotive to the new narrow-gauge railway near Lake Wakatipu in New Zealand.^[4]