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 Px48-1741.[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]

References

  1. ^ "Steam in Asia (East) 2011". Archived from the original on 23 April 2012. Retrieved 14 August 2011.
  2. ^ a b "Steam in the Cook Islands". The International Steam Pages. Retrieved 13 July 2025.
  3. ^ "Preserved Foreign Steam Locomotives in New Zealand". Archived from the original on 18 January 2017. Retrieved 10 December 2014.
  4. ^ a b "No Steam in the Cook Islands..." The International Steam Pages. Retrieved 13 July 2025.

21°12′25″S 159°46′15″W / 21.20694°S 159.77083°W / -21.20694; -159.77083

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