Akahele ʻike kaʻaahi

Our afternoon at the Hawaiian Railway Society in Kapolei started as forecasted: with lots of rain. Abundant shelter was provided though by the Society’s spacious workshop, which houses historic locomotives, cars, engines, and assorted parts of ongoing or future restoration projects. Steve, the operations manager, opened our event with an overview of the train yard and workshop, including historical background, before inviting us to explore and sketch to our hearts’ content. Sticking to script (i.e., weather forecast), the skies cleared at 2 p.m., well in time for our show-and-tell gathering among the old railway cars. Several of us could not resist the urge to learn more and boarded the 3 p.m. train to Kahe Point, complete with narration by the Society’s knowledgeable volunteers. Which is where we learned the Hawaiian words that originally adorned the signs at railroad crossings and feature as the title of this post: Watch out for the fire wagon!

As always, don’t forget to check out our sketches on Flickr and upload your own!

See you at our next event on April 21!

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