The Hawaii Consolidated Railway (HCR), originally named the Hilo Railroad Company, was a standard gauge common carrier railroad that served much of the east coast of the island of Hawaii (The Big Island) from 1899 until 1946, when a tsunami destroyed part of the line. History Origin Like the Oahu Railway and Land Company (OR&L), the HCR grew out of a necessity for good transportation (in this case, mainly to serve 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 acquired approximately of land through purchases and leases worth $5 million, southeast of the growing city of Hilo in present day Keaau and Puna, which would become his Olaa Sugar Company and Puna Sugar Company plantations. The Olaa and Puna Sugar plantation mills were approximately from Hilo Harbor, respectively. Dillingham incorporated the Hilo Railroad Company (HRC) with his partners Lorrin A. Thurston, Alfred Wellington Carter, and Mark P. Robinson; HRC received a charter on March 28, 1899 to build the original of the Hilo Railroad that connected the Olaa sugar mill to Waiākea, soon to become the location of Hilo's deepwater port. Under the terms of the charter, HRC was granted the right to build rail lines anywhere on the island over the next fifty years, and HRC was free to use any government land to do so. The line to Olaa Sugar was laid with 60-pound rail using standard-gauge railway. After rail service on the Olaa line began on June 18, 1900, work continued apace with a extension to Kapoho, home of the Puna Sugar Company plantation, completed by March 1902. Immediately after that two branch lines were constructed, also to sugar plantations, and then the railroad was extended north into Hilo itself. A chiefly tourist line, branching from Olaa, was built in 1901, routed inland up the mountain to Glenwood where visitors would then transfer to buses for the remaining trip to the Volcano House near Kilauea Volcano. Hāmākua Division and receivership At this point the Hilo Railroad's southern section was fairly complete, and with strong sugar-related traffic the company was financially healthy. However, the company's fortunes would change drastically when Dillingham and other company owners in 1907 petitioned the