The push-cart railways are an absolutely unique feature of railways on Taiwan Island unprecedented to any other area in the world. When the Japanese occupied Taiwan in 1895, there was apart from the railway line from Keelung via Taipei to Hsinchu no proper transportation infrastructure available on the island. As the army had to crack down several insurgencies, it started to construct a push cart line with 500mm gauge using the French Decauville system, which finally reached a length of more than 300km between Hsinchu and Kaohsiung. It took several years until a standard railway line (see Western/Trunk Line in History and Lines) replaced the push cart line. The Japanese government saw the advantages of the system to further enhance transportation capabilities on the island and encouraged construction of push cart lines throughout the whole island. The lines with gauges between 406mm and 545mm were often built and maintained by wealthy families. Basically anybody could use the tracks with self-built carts by paying a few to the line owner. The carts were pushed by humans and transported both passenger and goods (mainly agricultural products). The total length of the push cart lines grew rapidly from 267km in 1907 to 1,367km in 1931, thus having around twice the length of the governmental railway system! In 1927, the around 60 push cart companies on the island transported 5.3 million passenger and 840,000 tons of goods! The growing road systems made the push cart line more and more obsolete. However, some of them continued to operate until the mid of the 1970s! The Wulai scenic railway is the only remaining former push cart line on Taiwan Island. But human powered push carts on this line have been replaced with small electric trains nearly 50 years ago. Further informations on push cart lines can be found under sub item Push-Cart Railways.

Figure 1: Push-cart railways were once the backbone for transports in the rural areas of Taiwan (Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).

The hill and mountain areas on Taiwan Island are heavily forested up to altitudes of 3,000m. Starting from an altitude of 1,800m, conifers and cypresses aged sometimes up to several thousand years could be found. There was a high demand for such wood in Japan for building temples and furniture and thus the Japanese started to exploit the forest after they had occupied the island. The felled trees were transported down into the narrow valleys using wooden sledges or long chutes. From there, the wood was transported on mountain rivers to saw mills. However, the timber often was damaged during this kind of transportation. Thus, the first forest railways evolved. The Alishan Forest Railway, by far the largest forest railway on Taiwan Island, built a railway track up into the mountains and reached altitudes of 2,600m. Thus, this forest railway is described separately (see below). The other forest railways followed more or less the same schema. A simple railway track (in most cases 762mm gauge) followed the mountain river and replaced transport on the rivers. Waggons were either pushed by humans or pulled by animals like water buffaloes. Starting from the 1920s, aerial ropeways connected the forest areas up in the mountains with the railway tracks in the valleys. Isolated railway tracks soon followed and branched off from the mountain station of the aerial ropeways. Such systems of aerial ropeways and isolated lines reached lengths of more than 50km (e.g. Taipingshan). With the growing volumes of felled timber, the forest railways replaced human and animal power with locomotives. Steam locomotives were used on the lines in the valleys whereas small locomotives with internal combustion were used on the lines up in the mountains as steam locomotives were too heavy for transport on the aerial ropeways. At the beginning, the combustion locomotives used charcoal gas that could easily be produced up in the mountains; later petrol and diesel were used.

Figure 2: This photo shows a train on the Luodong Forest Railway, the valley line of the Taipingshan forest railway system (Unknown photographer / Public domain in Wikimedia Commons).

If you search for “Taiwan” and “Railway”, you will most probably soon end up with Alishan Forest Railway, the most famous railway on Taiwan Island. For a good reason. Not many adhesion railways in the world climb more than 2,500m in altitude. The main line starts from the tropical plains in Chiayi and ends up after nearly 75km in the alpine height of Alishan using a four-time spiral and several reversals to climb more than 2,000m in height. A private Japanese company started the construction in 1906, but ended up 1908 in bankruptcy and not even reached half the way to Alishan. The line was taken over by the governmental forestry bureau who finally opened the line to Alishan in 1914. From there, several lines branched off alongside the mountain ridges around Alishan to open up all the areas where the precious, up to some thousand-year-old conifers were growing. In the heydays, the complete railway system had a length of more than 150km and produced more than 100,000 tons of timber per year. Around 20 Shay Locomotives operated on the system alongside further locomotives. The last Shay Locomotives were withdrawn from daily operations in 1984; three of them remained in running condition and pull special trains from time to time. Alongside timber transport, tourism became an important source of income for the railway. First special tourist trains were already offered in the 1920s. On the first, rather flat part from Chiayi to Zhuqi, around six trains were running per day for the commuters working in the factories and refineries near Chiayi. After the war, timber transport resurged until the climax was reached end of the 1950s. Afterwards transportation figures crumbled, first slowly, but then very quick at the beginning of the 1970s. Luckily, the number of tourists travelling on the line climbed from 188,000 in 1950 to 372,000 in 1960. This helped the railway to survive.

Figure 3: This photo from the Japanese occupation era shows a Shay locomotive pulling a tourist train (author unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).

Taiwan was once the fourth-largest sugar producer in the world. Growing of sugarcane on Taiwan already started in the 17th century by the Dutch. However, turning it into an industry was up to the Japanese. After the occupation of the island in 1895, the government started a large-scale program for growing sugarcane in the western and southern plains of the island and encouraged the construction of sugar mills. The government handed out licences and large Japanese conglomerated entered the business. The first sugar mill was opened in 1901 in Qiaotou north of Kaohsiung, further followed soon and by 1915 around 35 large sugar mills operated by 13 different firms could be found in Taiwan. In the 1930s, the sugar industry was of strategic importance, as the ethanol produced by the sugar mills became a replacement for gasoline. The number of sugar mills rose to 43. The sugar mill in Qiaotou started to lay tracks with 762mm into the surrounding fields in 1906. As for the forest railways, the waggons were initially pulled or pushed by humans or buffaloes. One year later, the first steam locomotives were used on the tracks. The governmental licences for the sugar railways often obliged them to offer public passenger transport. Each sugar mill created its own network of sugar railways and used different types of locomotives. Unique was only the used gauge of 762mm by government order. The sugar railway network grew rapidly. In 1908, there were already 320km of tracks in operation (among them 140km with public passenger services) and 240km planned or under construction. At the end of WW II, the networks had reached a total length of nearly 3,000km with public passenger services on more than 600km; around 280 steam locomotives operated on the networks. The sugar railways played an important role in the development of areas which were not close to the government railway lines.

Figure 4: A steam locomotive (most probably from Orenstein & Koppel) transports sugar cane from the fields to the next sugar mill (Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).

Apart from the railways mentioned above, there was also a quite large number of rather small industrial railways on Taiwan Island. Especially the northern part of the island had large deposits of coal and minerals like gold or copper. In fact, the first railway on Taiwan Island was a short line from a coal mine at Badouzi (八斗子) near Keelung that ran from the mine to the sea coast. It was opened in 1877 and used animal or human power. This became somewhat the standard for the many small coal mines which popped up during the following decades on the northern tip of the island. Such small railways with gauges between 500mm and 762mm connected the coal, gold or copper mines with the next harbour or station of the governmental railways. Some of them switched to locomotives once volumes grew. But many continued to use human power and some were in operations until the 1980s! Areas with high densities of coal mines were connected to the governmental railway network with branch lines in cape gauge, e.g. the Xindian Line south of Taipei or the Pinxi Line (see Lines). The growing demand for electricity due to the industrialization on Taiwan Island in the 1960s was met with the construction of coal power plants. This alongside government policies to be independent from imports helped the often rather archaic coal mines to survive until the 1980s. Three large mining accidents in 1984 with more than 250 death miners lead to the closure of most of the mines. Just few coal mines continued operations into the 1990s with the help of government subsidies before they also closed. Today, there are no more active coal mines on the island.

Figure 5: This locomotive was onced used at Chigu saltworks (M940504, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons).

As in most Asian agglomerations, metro systems only appeared recently on Taiwan Island. The city of Taipei suffered from road traffic congestion since the 1970s. However, the first metro line at Taipei was only opened in 1996. Since then, the system has evolved very quickly. It has now six lines with a total length of more than 150km and a daily ridership of 2 million. The lines run through the city either elevated or underground. The second largest city Kaohsiung opened its metro system in 2008 with two line and a total length of around 40km. In 2017, the system was enhanced with a tramway. The area of New Taipei/Taoyuan recently saw the opening of one metro line in 2017 and one tramway line in 2018. A further metro line and a tramway are under construction. The city of Taichung also opened a metro system in 2018. All the cities mentioned above as well as further cities are planning further metro and tramway lines. Further details of metro systems can be found under sub item Metro Systems.

Figure 6: A Taoyuan Metro Express Train is entering Chang Gung Memorial Hospital Station (Cheng-en Cheng from Taichung City, Taiwan, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons).