The destruction was so massive that the HCR filed for abandonment soon after the tsunami, receiving permission from the Interstate Commerce Commission to do so as of December 31, 1946. Parts of the original Hilo Railway line southeast of Hilo were taken over by the local sugarcane plantations, but those were soon abandoned for trucks in 1948. Despite its destruction, the bridge-laden Hāmākua division was later appropriated by the Territorial Government and became part of the Hawaii Belt Road north out of Hilo. One of the only remnants of the railway is the roundhouse built in 1921 in Hilo at coordinates , which is on a list of most endangered historic sites in Hawaii.