The Oahu Railway and Land Company, or OR&L, was a narrow gauge common carrier railway that served much of the Hawaiian island of Oahu, 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 Benjamin Dillingham, a self-made businessman who arrived in Honolulu as a sailor in 1865. After falling from his horse and breaking his leg while riding in the countryside, Dillingham was forced to stay in Hawaii and recuperate. He decided to make the island kingdom his home. Dillingham had a great deal of business acumen and soon became quite wealthy and influential in the early Honolulu community.
Among his development ideas, he conceived in the 1870s of the arid Ewa 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 Ewa by horse-drawn wagon was an all-day affair. The key was to build a railroad.
Around the time Dillingham was dreaming of his railroad, another businessman, James Campbell successfully dug Ewa's first artesian well in 1879, effectively solving the water problem. Campbell, who had purchased of Ewa land thought he might start a cattle ranch, but quickly realized that Ewa's rich volcanic soil (which overlays a massive ancient coral reef) combined with year-round sunshine and a supply of water was ideal for growing sugarcane. Within a couple of years sugarcane plantations were sprouting up in this southwestern part of Oahu. The need for transportation between the harbor and Ewa was becoming essential.
Early phase of OR&L
While Dillingham's dream of large-scale settlement on the Ewa 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 Ewa and Kahuku land to start two sugarcane plantations and obtained a government railroad charter from King David Kalākaua on September 11, 1888. After securing the capital, Dillingham broke ground in March 1889 to connect the between Honolulu and Aiea (as demanded in the charter) by fall 1889. On November 16, 1889, the king's birthday, the OR&L officially opened, giving free rides to more than 4,000 passengers.
By 1892, the line was long, reaching Ewa sugar mill, home of Dillingham's Ewa Plantation Company property. Although progress stalled during the chaos of the late Kingdom and early Republican periods, by 1895 the railroad had passed through what would become the junction of Waipahu, traversed the Ewa plain, and was skirting the Waianae coast to a sugar mill there. After issuing gold bonds in January 1897 the company extended the railroad around Oahu's rugged Kaena Point to Haleiwa on the north shore by June 1897, where Dillingham built a hotel.
By December 1898, the main line was complete, stretching past Waimea Bay and Sunset Beach to Kahuku and the Kahuku sugar mill past the island's northernmost tip. Although a circle-island line was proposed, it was never seriously considered. In 1906 an branch line was constructed from Waipahu up the Waikakalua Gulch to Wahiawa and the pineapple fields of central Oahu. The railroad had taken its final shape.
OR&L to World War I
thumb|OR&L passenger car coach #2, a first class coach sitting at the Hawaiian Railway Society
thumb|OR&L #19, a 47 tonner GE diesel electric locomotive sits on the Iwilei Turntable in Honolulu. This turntable was electrically operated.
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 Waianae Coast, sand from Waianae to Honolulu during the development of Waikiki, and served the major military bases: Pearl Harbor, Hickam Field, Barber's Point Naval Air Station, Schofield Barracks, and Wheeler Army Airfield.
In 1926, Dillingham built a new passenger terminal designed by Bertram Goodhue, one of the most famous architects in the country, who had also designed the Honolulu Museum of Art and the C. Brewer Building in a Spanish Mission Revival style that matched that of many other public buildings erected during that era. The OR&L train station was converted to a Honolulu Rapid Transit bus terminal after 1947 (later discontinued), and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
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 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. 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.
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 of countryside back to the Honolulu station.
Two diesel locomotives, GE 44-ton switchers numbered 15 and 19, remain in regular use on the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad.