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Railroads of Hawaii by Gerald Best Narrow & Stanrard gauge w/ dust jacket
Railroads of Hawaii by Gerald M Best
Narrow gauge and stanrdard gauge common carriers
Hard Cover w/Dust Jacket
194 pages
Copyright 1978
CONTENTS
Preface 7
Chapter 1- Pioneer Narrow Gauge on Maui 13
Chapter 2 - First Narrow Gauge on the Big Island 35
Chapter 3 - The Great Dillingham Dream 53
Chapter 4 - Standard Gauge on the Big Island 123
Chapter 5 - Narrow Gauge Shortlines 159
Chapter 6 - Railroading for Fun 169
Appendix 181
Bibliography 190
Index 191
DUST JACKET INTRODUCTION
When King Kalakaua affixed his signature to "An Act to Promote the Construction of Railways," in his Hawaiian Islands during August 1878, he set off an epidemic of railroad building in the islands that would become our 50th state. Two years earlier the United States ratified a reciprocal trade treaty with the Hawaiian kingdom, permitting entry of Hawaiian raw sugar into the U.S. duty free.
With the expansion of the sugar industry came a network of narrow and standard gauge common carrier and plantation railroads. The first commercial carrier was the 36-inch Kahului Railroad of Maui, which began operations in the islands in 1879. The only standard gauge track in the islands belonged to the Hawaii Consolidated Railway, which experienced many difficulties during its lifetime, but continued to serve the "Big Island" until a tidal wave destroyed its tracks in 1946. The most famous of the Hawaiian railroads was the 3-foot gauge Oahu Railway & Land Company system that nearly encircled the island of Oahu. The railroad ran its first train on September 4, 1889, the 45th birthday of land-promoter Benjamin Dillingham. The OR&L had the most important career of any of the common carrier roads. Its finest hour began when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and it served the nation well during the crisis.
Regardless of the fact that the Hawaiian railroads began life when our 50th state was a foreign country, most of the locomotives came chiefly from American builders - largely the Baldwin Locomotive Works - and construction and operation was to mainland standards.
Railroads of Hawaii contains a gallery of superb photographs integrated into a sparkling text. This volume is an intensely human story of Hawaiian tradition, of adversity, achievement and triumph. The very name "Hawaii" conjures up visions of lovely beaches flanked by swaying palms and rolling surf.
Indeed, such places exist throughout the islands, but it was also a railroad paradise. Come relive the days when steam trains operated in the most beautiful settings on earth, where trains ran beside coves and foaming waterfalls, around cliffside seascapes, and rolled near the splendor of Mauna Kea
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