Riding Taiwan’s conventional train network reveals a landscape of quiet change, cultural memory, and fading towns.
story and photos BY STEVEN CROOK
The 241 stations operated by state-run Taiwan Railway Corporation (TRC) span the spectrum from the vast passenger crowds at Taipei Main Station to the near-empty platforms of Fangshan in Pingtung County.
Since I first arrived in Taiwan in 1991, I’ve used the conventional rail almost every week. For reasons of work or pleasure, I’ve gotten on and off trains at around 100 stations – more than most people, I reckon.
To round out my railfan résumé, I took a few train trips earlier this year which, strung together, constituted a huandao (環島) by TRC – a round-the-island journey of close to 900 km that favors lesser-known towns over big cities.
All aboard
Traveling clockwise out of Taipei, there’s a slew of stations familiar to those who commute by train. Past Ruifang, however, the pace of life slows considerably. The one and only time I stopped at Mudan, the first station after the Pingxi Branch Line splits from the main line, I looked down from the platform and watched a pair of Reeves’s muntjacs forage amid the bamboo less than 20 meters away.
Wild animals avoid humans, but this part of Taiwan is gradually emptying of people. New Taipei’s Shuangxi District, in which Mudan is located, now has just half of its 1980 population. Part of the Tamsui-Kavalan Trails (also known as the Danlan Old Trails) passes near Mudan, and I got the impression that if it wasn’t for hikers, the town’s old street would most days be as quiet as a graveyard.
Continuing toward Yilan, just beyond Gongliao the railway runs alongside what may be the island’s richest bird habitat. According to eBird, an online global database of bird observations, 367 avian species have been spotted at Tianliaoyang Wetland (田寮洋濕地). But not everyone goes there to see birds – train photographers say the backdrop of greens and blues creates canvas-like vistas.
The Pacific comes into view as soon as trains emerge from the New Caoling Tunnel (the old tunnel is now part of a popular bike trail). Approaching Guishan Station, you’ll quickly understand why the station has this moniker. Guishan Island (龜山島, also known as Turtle Island due to its shape) is clearly visible 5 km to the southeast.
Just north of Luodong is Zhongli, not to be confused with its Taoyuan namesake. Its main attraction is Chung Hsing Cultural and Creative Park (中興文化創意園區), a former paper mill turned heritage site with repurposed warehouses and preserved industrial relics.
Nearby Luodong Station, the Luodong Forestry Culture Park (羅東林業文化園區) features a large pond where timber was once soaked to prevent cracking. The semi-submerged logs, lingering decades after forestry policy shifted to conservation, create an eerie, striking atmosphere in murky weather.
Despite the tunnel-heavy stretch between Luodong and Xincheng in Hualien County, it’s worth keeping your eyes on the world outside. Whether you sit on the seaward or inland side, you’ll notice that the dramatic landscapes enroute have yet to recover from the April 2024 earthquake or the typhoons that hit the region in the second half of the same year.
In mid-March, staff at TR Xincheng Taroko Station told me that since the quake closed almost all of the trails and attractions around Taroko Gorge, far fewer people have been passing through their turnstiles. But for those interested in local history, there’s still a good reason to break your journey here.
Xincheng Catholic Church (新城天主堂) is built amid the ruins of a Shinto shrine – a rare mix of torii gates, stone lanterns, and Christian architecture. After World War II, the site was desecrated and occupied by squatters before being sold to the Hualien Diocese. Rather than level the shrine’s remains, the church was built among them. Unless you climb over a wall, you’ll enter the compound by walking beneath a concrete torii gate. Approaching the ivy-covered chapel (with a shape inspired by Noah’s Ark) you’ll see stone toro lanterns. Just beyond the chapel, there are komainu, statues of lion-dogs.
Chugging along
Slow-travel enthusiasts may want to add other Hualien County stations to their itinerary.
The spread-out settlement around Fengtian Railway Station barely counts as a town, yet it has one of the east’s most interesting museums. Hualien Archaeological Museum (花蓮縣考古博物館) takes an inventive approach to the distant past appealing to children as well as adults. The museum’s No. 2 building, almost 2 km away, was built circa 1918 as a guidance office that served Japanese agriculturalists brought to the region by the colonial government. More recently, it contained an exhibition about the history of Taiwanese jade.
Guangfu is a bit busier, and the complex where sugarcane was processed between 1913 and 2002 is largely intact. There’s quite a lot to see – damage from U.S. air raids, managers’ Japanese-style bungalows (restored units are now part of a hotel), and a steam locomotive that once hauled cane from plantation to refinery.
Travelers keen to avoid crowds should eschew Ruisui, Chishang, and Zhiben. Alternatively, Jinlun (36 km south of Taitung City) is well-known for its hot springs and has a church that’s just as special as yet different from the one in Xincheng.
Kiokai Ni Santo Josef (金崙聖若瑟天主堂) is a striking example of how some Catholic missions have incorporated locally-recognized iconography into their worship spaces to make the mission’s message more relatable. The church is replete with Paiwan motifs such as eagle feathers, animal jawbones, and hundred-pacer snakes. The carved-wood main doors showcase masterful craftsmanship.
The South Link Line connecting Taitung with the Kaohsiung-Pingtung area wasn’t completed until 1991, and in 2020 it was the last section of the around-Taiwan loop to be electrified. Nostalgia is a powerful force, of course, and TRC soon brought some old trains out of storage to launch the daily “Breezy Blue” service between Taitung and Fang-liao in Pingtung. A vintage diesel locomotive pulls non-air-conditioned passenger cars with openable windows to allow for circulation, hence the name.
The ninth stop north of Fangliao serves a solidly Hakka township. Zhutian’s original 1919 station building has been preserved in the shadow of the elevated structure that replaced it a decade ago. Like many colonial-era landmarks, it has a tiled roof, clapboard sides, and oodles of charm. Other relics hereabouts include an old bathhouse and the well railway workers relied on drawing water to bathe.
A half-hour walk from the station, between the railroad and Freeway 3, Tiaodi Village Words-Worshipping Oblation Furnace (糶糴村敬字亭) was the site of a ritual that continued well after World War II. Reflecting the community’s deep respect for literacy and the written word, residents as recently as the 1970s would carefully collect any paper with writing on it – not to discard them casually, but to burn them in a solemn ritual meant to retire written characters rather than throw them away.
The completion in 2018 of the Kaohsiung Urban Railway Underground Project’s first phase added seven “new” commuter stations to the TRC network. Two are rebuilds of colonial-period stops while the older and more interesting of the pair is Sankuaicuo TRC Station, just 800 meters – two minutes by local train – from Kaohsiung Main Station.
Sankuaicuo was Kaohsiung’s key rail hub between 1911 and the 1940s, when it was supplanted by the first iteration of the current main station. Following its closure in 1986, the small building with the stationmaster’s office was declared a historic site and renovated. It’s not publicly accessible as an interior design firm rents it. Nearby stands a 110-year-old steam locomotive attached to a passenger car of similar age. Both served in Taitung until the east’s 762 mm-gauge tracks were replaced by TRC standard 1,067 mm-gauge in the early 1980s.
Among several colonial-era stations that have never been retired are four in Greater Tainan. If you’re traveling clockwise around Taiwan, the order in which you’ll encounter them is: Bao’an, Tainan, Linfengying, and then Houbi.
In central Tainan, an 8.23 km-long stretch of the main line is being relocated underground, but the 1936 station at the heart of the city will – like the old station in Kaohsiung – be preserved and repurposed. Rail buffs will sleep easier knowing there are no plans to replace the charmingly simple, part-wood station buildings at Bao’an, Linfengying, and Houbi.
Full steam ahead
Northbound trains entering Taichung from Changhua turn either northwest (the TRC’s Coast Line) or northeast into central Taichung (the Mountain Line). The Coast Line includes Dadu TRC Station, 700 meters from Huangxi Academy (磺溪書院), an appealingly restored 137-year-old scholarly hall.
Like the 60-odd other traditional academies that were established across Taiwan and its outlying islands during the Qing dynasty, Huangxi Academy prepared scholars for the exams to assume civil service posts. Unlike several similar institutions, however, it fell into neglect after the 1930s, and wasn’t rescued until the late 1980s.
The Coast Line also serves Baishatun, the starting point of the annual Baishatun Mazu Pilgrimage. By attendee count, it ranks second only to the more famous Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage, which sets out from Taichung.
Local trains on the Mountain Line stop at Tai’an in the northern part of Taichung. In fact, there are two stations here, given the line was repositioned closer to the sea in the late 1990s.
The current platforms are five floors above street level, and some say the view across the Da’an River toward Huoyanshan is reason enough to disembark here.
The old station, 1.5 km away, is now Tai’an Railway Cultural Park (泰安鐵道文化園區). On the side of a building across the road, there’s an eye-catching fantasy mural of a steam locomotive smashing through a wall. Redundant tracks go from the park to Da’an River Iron Bridge (大安溪鐵橋), which looks sturdy enough to at least support a bikeway but isn’t open to the public.
The Coast and Mountain lines merge in Miaoli County’s Zhunan Township, where clockwise train travelers will come to Qiding TRC Station. Bilingual signs around the station point the way to the Qiding Lookout (崎頂觀景臺) and Zimu Tunnels (子母隧道).
Facing the Taiwan Strait and its ever-growing forest of offshore wind turbines, the lookout is ideally positioned for taking in one of Taiwan’s signature west coast sunsets. The tunnels (67 and 131 meters long) were decommissioned because they were too narrow for modern rolling stock, but they remain structurally sound and are now a popular photo spot. Their old stonework – complete with bullet holes left by U.S. aircraft during WWII – makes them a compelling piece of Taiwan’s railway and military history.
Continuing northward to the other side of Hsinchu, Fugang in Taoyuan attracts a few diehard railfans from Japan on account of its name. The station that serves this quiet Hakka community is one of no fewer than 32 in Taiwan where the name in Chinese script exactly matches the kanji name of a station in Japan (in Fugang’s case, Gunma Prefecture’s Tomioka, 富岡). Others are Taoyuan – it’s Japanese “twin” is Momozono (桃園), between Osaka and Nagoya – and Taipei’s Songshan, which corresponds to Matsuyama (松山), the largest city on Shikoku Island.
