The Hawaii Consolidated Railway (HCR), originally named the Hilo Railway, was a standard gauge common carrier railroad that served much of the east coast of the island of Hawaiʻi (The Big Island) from 1899 until 1946, when a tsunami destroyed part of the line.
Like the Oahu Railway and Land Company (OR&L), the HCR grew out of a necessity for good transportation (mainly for sugarcane plantations) at the turn of the 20th century. Though not the first railroad on the Big Island, it was certainly the most ambitious. Its principal backer was Benjamin Dillingham, the businessman who also started the OR&L, among numerous other Hawaiian companies.
In the late 1890s Dillingham purchased land near the growing city of Hilo, and it was this land that would become his Olaʻa Sugar Company plantation. On March 28, 1899, Dillingham received a charter to build the original eight miles of the Hilo Railroad that connected the Olaʻa sugar mill to Waiākea, soon to become the location of Hilo’s deepwater port.
