Waimanalo Sugar Co. “Olomana”

The “Olomana” is a small tank locomotive delivered to Hawaii by Baldwin in 1883 and used by the Waimanalo Sugar Co. to haul sugar cane from the plantations to the refinery. It is generally considered the third self-propelled vehicle in Hawaii. It had the wheel arrangement 0-4-2T and a saddle tank. The initially coal-fired locomotive was converted to oil-firing in 1928 after an unsuccessful attempt to use sugar cane as fuel. In 1944 it and its sisters were retired and replaced by trucks.

The locomotive only became famous after it returned to the US mainland in 1948. It came to Hollywood and was used on the private Grizzly Flats Railroad. In 1952 and 1953 it was first restored and converted to wood firing. In the following time it was operated several times by Walt Disney and influenced him noticeably. In 1977 it was donated to the Smithsonian Museum, from where it came to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg in 1999.