Next Stop Honolulu! The Story Of The Oahu Railway & Land Company By Jim Chiddix

Description: RailroadTreasures offers the following item: Next Stop Honolulu! The Story Of The Oahu Railway & Land Company By Jim Chiddix Next Stop Honolulu! The Story Of The Oahu Railway & Land Company 1889-1971 By Jim Chiddix & MacKinnon Simpson Hard cover with dust jacket Has plastic protective covering 352 pages Reflections from lights on some photos Copyright 2004 Chapters CH 01... from sailor to trainman CH 02... miles and miles of track CH 03... sweet gold of sugar CH 04... pineapples aboard CH 05... cargoes along the route CH 06... passengers & timetables CH 07sl000000000wing down CH 08... a wartime railroad CH 09... the end of the line CH 10... railroading resurrected Appendix?OR&L Locomotives ... car roster ... year-by-year ... the annual rep ... acknowledgements ?bibliograhy ... index About This Book Benjamin Franklin Dillingham fell off a rented horse, and the history of modern Hawai`i was changed forever. Dillingham was a New Englander, born on Cape Cod in 1844, and he went to sea at the age of 14. After a series of adventures, and rapid advancement, he landed in Honolulu as first mate aboard the bark Whistler in 1864. He was 20. After breaking his leg in the topple from the horse, he was carried to the American Marine Hospital in Nu'uanu to heal. The Whistler sailed without him, and Dillingham was an ex-seafaring man, ashore for good. After recuperating, he found work at a local hardware store. An entreprenurial spirit bubbled within, and in a few years he had borrowed some money and was its owner. He also married a missionary daughter and started a family. Frank Dillingham's businesses-the hardware operation and later a large dairy-struggled with heavy obligations for decades, and he was constantly searching for a 'big score' that would eradicate his debts and provide for his family. That score was the Oahu Railway & Land Company, a narrow-gauge operation that established sugar as a phenomenally profitable crop on 0`ahu. The primary line headed west from the main station in downtown Honolulu, eventually stitching together sugar plantations in Aiea, Waipahu, 'Ewa, Wai`anae, Waialua, and Kahuku. A later branch wending its way to the center of the Island served the pineapple growers around Wahiawa. For almost sixty years-from 1889 to 1947-0R8EL trundled both freight and passengers around the island, creating great fortunes not only for the Dillinghams, but for many others as well. This book is the story of that line. Introduction This book is the culmination of an interest spanning well over half my life. I arrived in Hawaii in 1971 to join a college friend in a job crewing on Seraphim, a charter sailboat based at Pokal Bay, in Wai`anae, on 0`ahu's leeward coast. That business soon went broke, but I was determined to stay in the Islands, and found a job as a technician with the tiny cable TV company serving the rural Wai`anae Coast, an area otherwise without reception. As I followed cable lines up and down every country road, I became aware of the narrow gauge railroad tracks which led up the coastline and into a broad valley which was home to the Lualualei Naval Ammunition Depot. Residents explained that during the Vietnam War, Navy trains had hauled ordnance from the depot to ships in the West Loch arm of Pearl Harbor, and that, years earlier, a privately owned railroad had steamed up the coast from Honolulu and around rocky Ka`ena Point to the North Shore of the island. Further investigation revealed that the Hawaiian Railway Society was restoring locomotives in a borrowed equipment facility at the Depot, as well as publishing newsletters recounting the history of the original rail line, Oahu Railway & Land Company. My fledgling career consumed most of my time, as I first became manager of that little cable TV system, and then chief engineer for the larger Oceanic Cable system in Honolulu. Oceanic eventually wired the entire island and absorbed the smaller operations, including my original employer. I spent fifteen years on 0`ahu, working in cable and starting an electronics manufacturing company. I often visited the Hawaiian Railway Society, which had moved from Lualualei to the sugar mill town of 'Ewa, not far from Pearl Harbor. My interest was less in restoring old equipment, however, than in the history of what I came to realize had been a very sophisticated railroad operation and a central part of life on Oahu for more than half a century. I felt a kinship with the people, especially the engineers, who had built a vital network for island commerce nearly a century before my own efforts to construct a different kind of network across the same geography. I began collecting information on the Oahu Railway-and narrow gauge railroads in gen-eral-in the mid-seventies. These included the Society's monthly newsletter, Akahele I Ke Kaahi, as well as the few books written about Hawaiian railroads, most now long out of print. As my career moved my wife and me from Honolulu to Colorado, Connecticut, and Manhattan, we returned to Hawai`i as often as possible to see friends and to visit Oceanic Cable, as I worked until recently for its parent company, Time Warner. A feature of these visits was almost always a trip to the Bishop Museum, where I'd poke through the archived files of the Dillingham Corporation and other collections of photos, maps and documents about OR&L. I purchased copies of some of the photographs, and displayed them in my office and home, and I began plans for a model railroad depicting the Oahu Railway. I constructed my first OR&L layout in our basement in Connecticut, but had to dismantle it when we moved. A more ambitious layout is now underway in our Colorado home. I built and purchased a collection of locomotives and cars along the lines of those on OR&L in On3 scale, 1/4" to the foot. The many similarities with the Colorado narrow gauge lines of the Denver, Rio Grande & Western Railroad, very popular with modelers, made this task much easier. The Oahu Railway is a surprisingly good prototype for a model railroad. It was constrained in size by its island location, had only one major and a few minor branch lines, and hauled a All pictures are of the actual item. There may be reflection from the lights in some photos. We try to take photos of any damage. If this is a railroad item, this material is obsolete and no longer in use by the railroad. Please email with questions. Publishers of Train Shed Cyclopedias and Stephans Railroad Directories. Large inventory of railroad books and magazines. Thank you for buying from us. Shipping charges US Shipments: When you add multiple items to your cart, the reduced shipping charges will automatically be calculated. For direct postage rates to other countries, send me an email. Shipping varies by weight. Terms and conditions All sales are final. Returns accepted if item is not as described. Contact us before making a return. No warranty is stated or implied. Please e-mail us with any questions before bidding or buying. Thanks for looking at our items.

Price: 50 USD

Location: Talbott, Tennessee

End Time: 2024-12-07T18:05:53.000Z

Shipping Cost: 10 USD