The Hawaiian Railway Society’s yard in ʻEwa preserves a piece of the narrow-gauge railroad that once linked Honolulu with plantations and communities around Oʻahu. The Oahu Railway & Land Company carried passengers and freight as well as sugar. The surviving right-of-way from ʻEwa toward Nānākuli is on the state and national historic registers. The society has restored about six and a half miles of track between ʻEwa Beach and Kahe Point. A trip on the line offers a sense of how the railroad followed the leeward side of the island.
One of the best stories at the yard began with an engine the Waialua Agricultural Company planned to scrap in 1970. The engine was a Baldwin steam locomotive, Waialua No. 6. Efforts to save it led to the formation of the preservation group that became the Hawaiian Railway Society. The society later received a 25-ton General Electric diesel and surplus flatcars from the Army. That contribution points to another chapter in Oʻahu’s rail history, when military installations had equipment of their own and rail traffic moved people and supplies around the island.
Parlor Car No. 64, built in 1900 for railway founder Benjamin Franklin Dillingham, shows a very different side of the operation. The private car was intended to entertain Hawaiian royalty and visiting dignitaries. Its restoration helps visitors picture what railroad travel looked like for a small group of invited guests. Compare the idea of that private rolling room with the society’s open-air excursion cars, where the landscape and the sounds of the train are a large part of the experience.
The yard also gives visitors a chance to distinguish between preserving a machine for display and returning it to operation. The society has restored diesel locomotives to running condition and undertaken exterior restorations on steam engines. Look for the ʻEwa No. 1 engine and the archival views of the Iwilei roundhouse and turntable on the society’s site. Together they show the kinds of facilities and machinery the original railroad needed well beyond the passenger platform.
Visitor information
Researched November 2026.
Sources
More railroad museums in Hawaii
- Grove Farm Museum — Plantation Locomotives — Lihue: Historic plantation locomotive collection
- Laupahoehoe Train Museum — Laupahoehoe: Railroad and community history museum
- All 3 railroad museums and sites in Hawaii
Keep exploring
- All heritage sites — museums, stations and landmarks
- Alaska & Hawaii — the trains you can ride in the region