Re: OR&L and other pineapple roads

The Hawaiian Railway Society, a chapter of the NRHS, maintains a museum at Ewa on Oahu. The group at Eva gives rides on Sundays using ex government diesels, a home made car or two AND an original OR&L Presidents car, that hauled a King or Queen, President and even Mark Twain--all in all a good and ambitious group working over there. The 85 is on Maui and in pieces--they had a new boiler fabricated, but it didn't fit when it was delivered and nothing else has been done with it as there are no funds available(at least in November 1999 when I was there). The two coaches and a caboose still sit in LA. The other "sugar engine" from Gfiffith Park is a "billboard" at the Depot at the Lahaina end of the Sugar Cane Train in Maui--BUT it's outlined in white lights at night! There are three "sugar" engines on Kaui associated with the Grove Farm Plantation and they have been(maybe some still are) operable--I heard that they used one of them in an upcoming movie--the problem is, they have no track, and even for the movie work they borrowed some rail from the museum at Ewa on Oahu. There is a nice museum on the big island of Hawaii where they have a car body or two and the remains of a small diesel(plymoth?). As for the books--Sugar Trains and Sugar Trains Pictorial and Narrow Gauge In A Kingdom--all By Jesse Conde are all out of print and COSTLY. Bests book on Railroads of Hawaii is also out of print. You might look in American Narrow Gauge, I believe that it is back in print, it has a few pictures of the OR&L. There are many of the little "sugar trains" that have survived--Ward Kimball and Gerald Best each had one on the Grizzly Flats Line in San Gabriel, CA--Ward's is still their, Gerald's is in the Smithsonian. Dr. Richard May has an engine he keeps in the Sierra Foothills that was the engine stored at Chama by Scenic Railways and was used on the Tahoe Trout Creek and Pacific Tourist Line for a year or two in the 70's. I hope this info helps.