BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – IN this second episode of the new educational project upon which SKNVibes has embarked to take the older folks back into time and to sensitise the younger generation on historical sites, buildings and other structures of importance in St. Kitts and Nevis, this week’s focus is on the Sugar Train.
Christopher Columbus landed on St. Kitts in 1493, which was then inhabited by the Caribs, and named the island St. Christopher after his patron saint. It was the first English colony in the Caribbean and it served as a base for further colonisation of the region.
St. Kitts was called the ‘Mother Colony’ and it was also the island upon which the African slaves were brought for distribution to as far as Jamaica in the north to Guyana in the south.
In 1643, sugarcane was introduced to St. Kitts and by 1775 the island had 200 sugar-producing estates and was then seen as the wealthiest of the British possessions.
Sugar at that time was called “King Sugar” because of its economic worth which is similar to today’s oil.
With the aim of maximising production and increasing their wealth, in 1926 a group of investors built a modern sugar factory in Needsmust and constructed a railway around St. Kitts to transport the cane from outlying estates for processing.
For centuries St. Kitts’ economy was sugar-based, but after many years of international competition and diminishing returns, the St. Kitts-Nevis Labour Party Government saw it fit to close the industry on July 31, 2005.
However, the sugar train survived and the government, in partnership with some private enterprises, has converted it into the ‘Scenic Railway Tours’ as an additional economic booster to the Tourism Industry upon which the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis is heavily dependent.
SKNVibes spoke to a number of individuals on this particular subject, and among them was a man named Harold who remembers going to the tracks upon which he placed his pennies for the wheels of the train to flatten.
Harold said, “After the train wheels had crushed the pennies, I used to drill holes into them and make wind chimes. It was a thing that most of us did in those days.”
Bailey remembers hopping the trains and taking long rides back and forth “to pull cane from the carts”; while Eileen laughed when asked what she remembers about the train.
She changed from laughter to smiles and said, “I was no tomboy but I did it to go see him”…a boy that she liked.
Another man, who gave his the name only as B, said that he remembers using the old wheels from the train to pound them out to get the ‘juke’ that was used to play marbles back in those days, and his friend, Jim, who had lost one of his arms following an incident while stealing a train ride.
Those days have long gone and the younger generation can certainly remember when the last sugar train crawled into the yard of the St. Kitts Sugar Manufacturing Corporation (SSMC) less than seven years ago, bringing an end to over 350 years of sugar production on the island.
However, unlike the belief of some people, the Scenic Railway came into existence even before the closure of the sugar industry. It started running tourist excursions on January 28, 2003 and now proudly carries the national flag as the “Last Railway in the West Indies”…a living link to a past when sugar ruled the island's economy.
To this day the St. Kitts Scenic Railway train makes daily excursion tours throughout the island on the same tracks that once host the trains that took the sugar cane from the fields to the factory.
The St. Kitts Scenic Railway takes passengers on a three-hour tour that makes a 30-mile circle around the beautiful Eastern Caribbean island of St. Kitts, with 18 miles by narrow gauge train and 12 miles on sightseeing buses.
The journey immerses travellers into St. Kitts’ village life.
Passing Mansion Village, one can see cliff-side piggeries and beyond are fields of pineapples. At Saddlers Village the train passes within inches of papaya, guava and banana trees, while backyards are strung with rainbows of billowing laundry. All along the route labourers and farmers stop in their work, and school children run out of classes as the train goes by. Smiles and waves bloom from all directions.
At La Valle Station, passengers transfer from the train to sightseeing buses and complete the circle tour on the Island Main Road. The route passes under the silent guns of Brimstone Hill Fortress and through a dozen small villages and towns that dot the Caribbean Sea side of St. Kitts before returning to the city of Basseterre and the cruise ship port. Hotel guests are transferred on to the end of their tour at Needsmsust Station.
Please feel free to send your ‘That Was Then, This Is Now Photos’ to editor@sknvibes.com and contribute to the advancement and education of the populace and readers worldwide.
Sources:
• International House of Museum
• St. Kitts Scenic Railway
• Locomotives International
