St. Kitts Scenic Railway — Attraction in Saint Kitts

Overall, a great experience and absolutely worth the price of admission. A few small negative points, but they are small, and I'll get to them last.

First of all, the tour is half bus and half train (which one is first depends on the time of day), I recommend starting early (by bus), to avoid the crush of the cruise line excursions. You're going to literally circumnavigate the island.

Our tour started by bus on the east coast, and our driver / tour guide was extremely knowledgeable, affable, and forthcoming. The roads are narrow, but even close to the cliffs i was never worried. You get to see the REAL St Kitts, not just the tourist spots. So you get to see wealth and extreme poverty, hear about slavery, rebuilt, and freedom, farming and technology, old ways and modernity.

We then transferred to the train, and continued our tour of the island on the north and west coast. We went through rainforest and plains, through abandoned sugar cane plantations, and through villages. Sometimes the houses and shacks are literally right next to the railroad, so close that you can almost shake hands with someone lying in their hammock. The poverty is astounding, but surprisingly, the people all seem very happy, and greet the train with a smile every time it goes by. I guess that is the benefit of living in a paradise, but it is also easy to imagine how horrible slavery on a sugar cane plantations would have been.

The train also features "masquerade dancers", two young men dressed in festival attire, displaying for the tourists what it would have been like 100 years ago in celebration. And the train also has unlimited drinks, which brings me to one of my small negative points. The car in front of us was filled with a group of obnoxiously drunk and rowdy Bros who took full advantage of the unlimited alcohol and made more noise than the train did. It is people like that that give America a bad reputation.

The train is a narrow gauge train, and since it was originally designed as a freight line and not a passenger line, it tends to lurch quite a bit. You get used to it pretty quickly, but I recommend you sit in the upper level of the car. There will be a lot more swaying movement, but there is also fresh air, and the views are much better!

Again, overall, it was absolutely worth...

What a brilliant day out!

I contacted the railway directly as we were, initially, a group of 12 to see if they could fit us in. They offered us the 0930 trip on Saturday morning. By the time we set off the group was down to 8 and as the website said they were closed on Saturdays I thought they may have opened up especially for us and we were not holding up our end of the deal however this was not the case and the train ended up being full of local people and their children.

The first 18 miles of the journey at 10 mph is on the train with a humorous and entertaining commentary given by Sweet Pea. The final 12 miles is in one of a fleet of 15 seater minibuses with running commentary given by the driver. They certainly know their stuff and our driver was very funny with it.

There are complimentary soft and alcoholic drinks available throughout the train part. These are made freshly and on demand by a waitress. Each of the carriages has it's own waitress and drinks area so there's plenty of service and drinks to go around. It appears, from what our bus driver said, you can manage to get through about 5 drinks during the train trip. I know I did 😁.

As the gauge of the rail is only 30 inches and the two deck carriages overhang each side by about 30 inches the top deck does sway and rock quite a bit but that's all part of the experience. The upper deck is open sided, the lower deck is enclosed. You can sit wherever you want but we all enjoyed being on the top deck, kneeling on the side benches to look out and take pictures and videos.

On the train you get to see the perimeter of the 2/3rds of the island from a different perspective than from the road as you run right through the middle of some villages and settlements plus it is often higher than the road.

All in all the round trip takes about 3 hours plus the loading and unloading times at either end.

Thoroughly recommended but make sure you contact them to book in advance. Even off season on a Saturday...

Had a great time on the train, lovely views from the top deck of the sea/island. Free drinks throughout the ride on the train. Local dancers on the train performing during the ride. A different way to see the island. Commentary on the bus was good, a bit limited while on the train. The staff were lovely.

Some points to note:

The train only runs when there is a cruise ship in. We were staying with family, during July/August for 3 weeks. The train only ran twice, two days apart during this time. Limited information on website, we had to ask our taxi driver from the airport when the train would be operating, although our emails were responded to promptly to confirm our booking.

The train does not go all the way round the island. It is about two thirds train journey, one third bus. You will usually do either the bus first or the train first depending on what group they put you in.

The train was fairly crowded as everyone wanted to sit on the top deck rather than the air conditioned section downstairs. The seats were a bit uncomfortable for the length of train ride (approx two hours).

A few other reviews mention the train derailing, luckily this didn’t happen to us but I can see how it’s possible as the track is overgrown with grass in places (presumably due to the infrequent nature of the service). I noticed there was a small maintenance vehicle running a little way ahead of the train, presumably to check the track before the train passes over. The train runs at...