[1] The Grove Farm Sugar Plantation Museum preserved original steam locomotives from the earliest days of rail transport in Kauai, restoring the small-gauge engines without much notice beyond the local community.

Unlike the Grove Farm Museum trains, which are brought out only once a month, the Kauai Plantation Railway is a daily fee-based attraction.

[9] For example, steam plows were used by around the middle of the century,[10] and abundant electricity was generated from mountain streams both to power mills and illuminate the fields for 24-hour shifts as early as 1885.

In Kauai, the Kilauea Sugar Plantation purchased a steam locomotive from Germany and created 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) narrow gauge tracks through the sugarcane fields.

She had arrived the day before, disembarking at Hanalei, a nearby port, and was invited to the September 24 ceremonial opening at the site of what is now the town of Kilauea.

The assembled dignitaries included Governor Paul P. Kanoe and the Plantation Manager, Robert A. Macfie, Jr.[13] This is often credited as Hawaii's first railway.

[14] While field railways ran on “literally little more than panels of snap-track laid and re-laid across the fields as the seasonal cutting progressed,”[6] more permanent right-of-ways were soon established to provide freight and passenger service from mills to ports, where raw sugar was packed aboard ocean-going ships bound for California refineries.

The Hawaiian Gazette reported that twelve miles (19 km) of track had been laid in September 1881, but its unofficial opening was in March 1882.

[17] The Hawaiian Gazette, in the same 1882 issue that it mentions the initial freight hauling by steam on the Big Island, also states that on Maui, the “Kahului railroad has met all the requirements for transporting freight.”[16] Although one source claims that Oahu did not enter the railway age until 1889,[14] it appears that Oahu had a field railway using the engine Olomana in 1883.

[24] The Paulo engine remained in active service hauling cane until 1920, when it was retired and put on display by the Koloa Sugar Plantation.

[25] The Grove Farm Museum locomotives are displayed at the Lihue Plantation Sugar Mill site and run on a revived section of the Lihue Plantation Railroad once a month[21] and on special occasions[3] such as Ohana Day (‘ohana’ translates as ‘family’) in 2010 with the opening of the Kauai Museum exhibition, ‘The Industrial Revolution on Kaua‘i: Steam Power and Other Innovations’.

[19] Grove Farm Company acquired the Wainiha, named for a stream and valley on Kauai's north shore,[20] in 1957, and it was the last steam locomotive in service for the sugar industry in Hawaii.

[25] Originally named the Kokee by its first owner, the Hawaiian Sugar Company, it was renamed for one of the plantation's lunas, or foremen,[27] in 1941 when acquired by Grove Farm.

[25] This unusual engine has a steel cab, with driving wheels smaller than the other Kauai Baldwins, and external counterweights with main rods connected to the rear drivers.

Only later did the Grove Farm Museum officials discover that the right-of-way for the Lihue Plantation passed through the newly purchased plot, and restored the disused track bed.

The coaches sit on six 35-foot (11 m) flatcars originally built in 1941 at Pearl Harbor by the U.S. Navy, which were then used by the Oahu Railway and Land Company and afterwards sold to White Pass and Yukon Route in Alaska.

These steam engines had originally worked at the Honolulu Plantation Company on Oahu prior to World War II.

In more recent times, the 105-acre (42 ha) Kilohana Plantation,[5] has been devoted to preserving the island's plantation-era heritage and interpreting it for both locals and tourists.