Oahu Railway and Land Company
Honolulu, Hawaii | |
Dates of operation | 1889–1971[1][2] |
---|---|
Technical | |
Track gauge | 3 ft (914 mm) |
The Oahu Railway and Land Company, or OR&L, was a
, and was the largest narrow gauge class one common carrier in the U.S, until its dissolution in 1947.Origin
The OR&L was founded by
Among his development ideas, he conceived in the 1870s of the arid ʻEwa Plain as an excellent location for human settlement. However, there were two problems: a lack of water and, more significantly, a lack of transportation. A trip from Honolulu to the
Around the time Dillingham was dreaming of his railroad, another businessman,
Early phase of OR&L
While Dillingham's dream of large-scale settlement on the ʻEwa Plain would have to wait until the last decades of the twentieth century, his plan for a railroad to the area came together quickly. He leased Campbell's ʻEwa and Kahuku land to start two sugarcane plantations and obtained a government railroad
By 1892, the line was 18.5 miles (29.8 km) long, reaching ʻEwa sugar mill, home of Dillingham's ʻEwa Plantation Company property. Although progress stalled during the chaos of the late Kingdom and early
By December 1898, the main line was complete, stretching past
OR&L to World War I
The OR&L was not only a sugarcane railroad. While it served several sugar mills and plantations, it also hauled end products, equipment and workers. The sugarcane plantations sometimes had their own lines. As a common carrier, the OR&L carried freight, passengers, mail and parcels. For instance, besides sugar and pineapples, the railroad hauled garbage from Honolulu to a dump on the Waiʻanae Coast, sand from Waiʻanae to Honolulu during the development of
In 1926, Dillingham built a new passenger terminal designed by
The railroad was profitable, even during the Great Depression, and was a significant mode of communications and transportation until the 1930s. As with railroads in the mainland, private automobiles and public roads led to a decline in traffic, especially passengers. Leading up to World War II the OR&L had all but abandoned its passenger operations, focusing on its profitable freight operations.
OR&L and World War II
World War II was arguably the OR&L's most important period, but would prove to be the company's undoing. After the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the OR&L became a major player in wartime transportation. The railroad carried out its regular freight operations as well as handling massive amounts of military-related traffic.
The OR&L became the chief transporter of civilian base workers, sailors, soldiers, airmen and marines, both from Honolulu to their bases, or from those bases back to Honolulu for coveted R&R. In 1944 and 1945 the OR&L carried nearly two million riders.
Postwar finale
Oahu Railway and Land Company Right-of-Way | |
Nanakuli, Hawaii | |
Coordinates | 21°21′14″N 158°1′40″W / 21.35389°N 158.02778°W |
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Area | 63 acres (25 ha) |
Built | 1889 |
Architectural style | 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge railroad track |
NRHP reference No. | 75000621[4] |
Added to NRHP | December 1, 1975 |
By the end of the war most of the rolling stock, right-of-way, and facilities were worn out. The company's executives pondered whether or not to continue operations. With the end of hostilities wartime traffic dried up. Moreover, Oahu's road network had been upgraded significantly, and thus for the first time there was serious road competition.
The company plugged along for the remainder of 1945 and into 1946 transporting servicemen. Nevertheless, passenger traffic and gross revenues dropped more than fifty percent. The railroad's fate was sealed by the 1946 Aleutian Islands earthquake and the resulting 55-foot (17 m) tsunami that struck on April 1, 1946.
Overlooked by most historians is the fact that from September 1, 1946, through November 18, 1946, 22,000 sugar workers at 33 of Hawaii's 34 sugarcane plantations went on strike.[5] Only the Gay & Robinson Plantation on Kauai remained in operation, as it was non-union privately owned. The strike had a major impact on Hawaii, and OR&L's freight dropped to record lows.[6]
Although the OR&L rebuilt the tracks destroyed by the tsunami and continued operations during the strike, the decision was made to shut down the entire operation at the end of that year. On December 31, 1947, a final excursion carrying company President Walter F. Dillingham (Benjamin Dillingham's son), along with numerous guests, departed from Kahuku behind American Locomotive Company steam engine number 70 through 71.4 miles (114.9 km) of countryside back to the Honolulu station.[6] The OR&L was finished after fifty-eight years. The OR&L replaced its railroad with a truck transport operation.
Most of the system was dismantled in the years following the company's dissolution, although the double-tracked mainline from Honolulu to ʻAiea remained intact until around 1959. Four of the locomotives, 250 freight cars, and a huge quantity of track and supplies were sold to an El Salvadoran railroad in 1950. The Hibiscus & Heliconia Short Line Railroad (H&HSL RR) was formed in 1948 by local rail fans and modelers. Ben Dillingham gave the group a 1st class coach #47 and an observation car #48, formerly the private parlor car named Pearl.
The Kahuku Plantation Co. allowed the group to use their tracks from near Kawela Bay to Punaluu. The group ran excursions infrequently, renting a steam locomotive from Kahuku Plantation. In 1950, the last steam locomotive was retired and the H&HSL RR then used one of two ex-Navy diesels. In 1954, the plantation abandoned its railroad in favor of trucks thus ending the H&HSL RR. Due to a lack of money and enthusiasm the group was unable to remove their two coaches from the property, so a plantation official had them torched.
The OR&L's Honolulu harbor branch, renamed the Oahu Railway, was used until December 31, 1971 for industrial operations. It served a Kalihi stockyard (until 1961), but chiefly hauled incoming Molokai pineapples from the wharves to the Libby, McNeil and Libby and California Packing Corporation (Del Monte) canning plants. The final section of the line was taken over by the US Navy in 1950.
The Navy, especially during the Korean War and the Vietnam War, ran ammunition trains between the West Loch of the Pearl Harbor Naval Base, through the ʻEwa Plain, to the Lualualei Naval Ammunition Depot on the Waiʻanae coast, preserving one of the most famous and scenic stretches of the railroad. The Navy switched to trucks, and the railroad property was abandoned in 1970.
The Oahu Railway & Land Company merged with Hawaiian Dredging to form Dillingham.
Historic preservation
In that same year a small group of railroad fans on Oahu learned of the abandonment and petitioned the Navy to turn the line and equipment over to them. This body became the
Today the tracks are owned by the State of Hawaii, while the HRS is the line's caretaker. The HRS continues to maintain and extend the right-of-way while running excursion trains from its station in ʻEwa. Currently, trains are scheduled for Saturday afternoons at 3:00 and Sunday afternoons at 1:00 and 3:00, running past the new Second City of
In addition to the ex-Army flat cars used to haul passengers, three cars are at the Hawaiian Railway Society, Coach #2, excursion car #57, and Benjamin Franklin Dillingham's private coach, parlor car #64.
Three cars also sit at
Two diesel locomotives, GE 44-ton switchers numbered 15 and 19, remain in regular use on the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad.
References
- ^ Chiddix & Simpson 2004, pp. 19–21
- ^ Chiddix & Simpson 2004, p. 260
- ^ a b Burlingame, Burl. "Elegant, functional train depot was typical of old Honolulu". Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Retrieved May 24, 2013.
- ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
- ISBN 978-0-8248-1550-9.
- ^ a b Chiddix & Simpson 2004, p. 312
- ^ Notes On Your Visit to the Travel Town Museum. Travel Town Museum
Bibliography
- Best, Gerald M. (1978), Railroads of Hawaii: Narrow and Standard Gauge Common Carriers, Golden West Books
- Chiddix, Jim; Simpson, MacKinnon (2004), Next Stop Honolulu, Honolulu: Sugar Cane Press, ISBN 0-9706213-1-0
- Treiber, Gale E. (2003), Hawaiian Railway Album WWII Photographs, vol. 1, The Railroad Press
- Treiber, Gale E. (2005), Hawaiian Railway Album WWII Photographs, vol. 2, The Railroad Press
External links
- Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) No. HI-91, "Oahu Railway & Land Company Trestle Ruins, Spanning Makaha Stream between Makaha Beach & Farrington Highway, near Kili Drive, Honolulu, Honolulu County, HI", 4 photos, 10 data pages, 1 photo caption page