St. Kitts has one of the few still-functioning sugar
cane railway lines in the Caribbean, running along almost 30 kilometers of
coastline. A pair of islands in the Lesser Antilles, St. Kitts and Nevis is one
of the smallest nations in the world.
This makes it all the more astonishing that St. Kitts
has a railway line at all. The narrow-gauge track was built by local plantation
owners between 1912 and 1926 to transport sugar cane to the factory in
Basseterre. But eventually, Caribbean sugar cane lost ground to European sugar
beet. Freight transport was discontinued, then seamlessly replaced by the St.
Kitts Scenic Railway. The American railway owners relied primarily on business
from cruise ship passengers. They purchased and installed powerful locomotives
that had once transported sugar beet in Poland. Today, these locomotives pull
double-decker carriages that provide an unobstructed view of the sea and
mountains. The locomotives from the sugar cane era have fallen into disrepair,
just like the old factory. A decline accelerated by the high humidity here.
Today, only the No. 15 Hunslet locomotive is still in running order. The engine
driver uses it for maintenance on the tracks and four long bridges. He loves to
recall the time when, as the most powerful locomotive in the fleet, it could
pull numerous wagons laden with sugar cane. We retrace the tracks of the old
sugar cane railway and experience an adventure or two with the railwaymen of
the St. Kitts Scenic Railway.
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