Push-Cart Railways on Taiwan Island

The "push-cart" railways were the simplest type of rails on which people and goods were transported in self-made wagons. I am not aware of any other region in the world where such railways were operated to such an extent as on Taiwan Island. Even though for many readers the push-cart lines may have nothing to do with the "classic" railways, I would like to describe a few more details.

The starting point for the “push-cart lines” was the Japanese occupation of Taiwan in 1895. At first, the Japanese had to deal massively with uprisings on the then undeveloped island. Apart from the recently opened railway line between the port in Keelung and Hsinchu, there were no other transport routes such as railways or roads. The extension of the existing railway line along the west coast to Kaohsiung was decided quickly, but there was a lack of capital to build the very complex route with many long bridges. It was finally opened only in 1907 (see menu item Main Lines). To overcome the missing transportation facilities, the Japanese army laid light rails in 500mm gauge and used wagons of the Decauville system. This resulted quickly in a continuous, manually operated, 300 km long “push-cart” line from the end of the existing state railway line in Hsinchu to Kaohsiung, with branches connected to ports along the coast.

Figure 1: According to the caption in Wikipedia, this picture from 1906 shows the mine railway from the Bogong Mine to Huludun on the left side of the Daan River. But I believe the picture shows a section near Taichung of the "push-cart" line between Hsinchu and Kaohsiung. Here, the State Railway line had to cross a mountain range and a wide river valley, which can be seen in the background. This section of the State Railway wasn't finished until 1907. In the meantime, a "push-cart" railway was used to close the missing gap. Since the state railway runs high above the river here, the "push-cart" line overcame the difference in altitude with this spiral. The double-track expansion also indicates that it was a route with a lot of traffic. So it was presumably the bridging of the last missing intermediate section of the state railway line (Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

After the state railway line between Keelung and Kaohsiung was finally opened completely in 1907, the parallel push-cart line became obsolete. Nevertheless, the ”push-cart” line showed how the previously completely undeveloped island could be developed with simple means. The rails were easy to relocate given the light weight of around 4.5kg per meter, larger engineering structures were not necessary, bridges were built as simple wooden structures; Still, one person could easily transport up to 200kg per cart. The Japanese colonial government quickly realized the benefits of such “push-cart” railways and encouraged the local population to build such lines. In contrast to the forest and sugar railways, which were mostly financed by Japanese industrial companies and Japanese capital, mostly wealthy, local families financed and operated the “push-cart” railways. The capital expenditure was relatively low, the rails were laid without a sub- or superstructure, and the carts were built by local blacksmiths and carpenters. Despite the simplicity, the construction and operation were monitored and regulated by the state. The track width chosen was largely around 500mm, with almost everything gauges between 406mm and 545mm being represented in historical records or even with a few remaining tracks. In some cases it was probably measurement or transmission errors (the statistics were kept in Arabic numerals, although otherwise almost exclusively Chinese numerals were used, the writers were correspondingly inexperienced with Arabic numerals and a 7 quickly became a 9 or vice versa) but obviously at least several different gauges could be found all over the island. A few centimetres did not play a big role in the operation. The tolerance was great and the cars were manufactured on site anyway. Only a few routes had larger gauges of 600 / 610mm or even 762mm. In 1907, the “push-cart” lines totalled 267 km in length; by 1916, it had grown to 1,087 km, making the “push-cart” railway network longer than the entire state railway network. The lines had the greatest extension in 1931 with a total length of 1,367km; in 1927 5.3 million (!) Passengers and 840,000t (!) of goods were transported on the “push-cart” lines. There were around 60 companies that operated the networks; the shortest just consisted of a 1.2 km long line, the largest company operated a network of 104 km and 550 carts were used there. The largest transportation figures were recorded on a “push-cart” network around Taipei. In 1922, 500,000 passengers and 150,000 tons of goods were transported there on a just 45km long network. One should compare these numbers with branch lines operated with locomotives in other countries, which were of a similar length!

Figure 2: This old postcard shows a typical situation on one of the many "push-cart" railway on Taiwan Island (Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

The operation of the “push-cart” railways was very simple. Goods such as rice or wood were placed directly on the flat wagon; for passenger transport, a small wooden bench was placed on it; for high-ranking passengers, there were special carts with a comfortable chair and a canopy. The carts were pushed by one or two people. The people pushing the carts might look like slaves, but the earning potential of the "pushers" was quite good, You could earn more money as a “pusher” than as a worker on the construction sites of the state railway lines. There were no timetables, a person with transportation demands just went to the next "train station" and looked for a cart and a “pusher”. The “pushers” were mostly free-lancers. They owned the car and had to pay a usage fee to owner of the railway. There were hardly any sidings. If two carts met, one of them was simply lifted off the rails to let the other one pass. Lines with high transportation figures were also double-tracked as it can be seen in Fig 1.

Figure 3: Another postcard showing the operation of a "push-cart" line on Taiwan Island (Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Figure 4: This postcard dated from 1907 shows a "push-cart" railway across the Taian River. The bridge is kept very simple and had most probably to be rebuilt after each typhoon period with the resulting floods. Despite the very simple design, there was heavy traffic on the line (Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Figure 5: High-ranking people could travel in comfortable chairs with a canopy as seen on this picture dated from 1934 (Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Figure 6: This historic picture from 1931 shows the field trip of Taipei's Prefectural Third Girls' High School on a "push-cart" railway near Yilan (Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Figure 7: This picture dated from 1936 shows the simple construction of the carts which were used on the lines (Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Figure 8: The "Yourui Railway" was one of the last "push-cart" railways on Taiwan Island. It was still in operation when the Japanese railway photographer Eiji Nozawa took this picture in 1976. The line was mainly used to transport coal, but some women also offered passenger services on the line (© Eiji Nozawa)

From the beginning of the 1930s, more roads were built on the now densely populated west coast. People and goods could be transported faster and cheaper than on the “push-cart” lines. The rails were often dismantled in these regions and simply rebuilt in more remote areas, e.g. on the East Coast of Taiwan Island. Nevertheless, the transportation figures steadily decreased. By 1939, the number of passengers had more than halved to around 2 million compared to 1927; in 1940, 960 km of manually operated routes with around 3,600 carts were still in operation on Taiwan Island. Due to the shortages during and immediately after the war, the “push-cart” lines experienced another short boom; but from the beginning of the 1950s, operations on the remaining lines fell massively. Most of the “push-cart” railways were now to be found on the still quite remote east coast area around Hualien. In 1963, 46.6km of hand-operated tracks were still in operation across Taiwan, and in 1970 just under 40km. The last representative was the Yourui Line in Wudu near Taipei that was mainly used to transport coal, but was also open to public transport (see Fig 8). It was finally closed at the end of the 1970s. There was even manual operation left on some of the coal railways in the 1980s (see menu item Other Railways).

Hardly any of the “push-cart” railway tracks has survived until the 21st century. The “push-cart” railway of Wulai has survived in parts, even though it is not manually operated anymore. The foundation stone for this “push-cart” railway was laid in 1904 when a wealthy family wanted to build a hydropower plant in the mountains south of Taipei and thus first constructed a first 545mm gauge track for this purpose. The project ultimately failed, but the track remained and was used by the local population. In 1921, the Japanese conglomerate Mitsui received a license to cut logs in the area. It extended the railway in both directions, so that on the one end Xindian, a suburb of Taipei, which at the same time was opened up with a branch line in cape gauge (see menu item Lines -> Branch Lines), on the other end, Wulai was reached by 1928 . The network finally reached a length of more than 25 km with sections that branched off the main line and were mainly used to transport felled wood. In addition to wood, tea, which was grown here in the mountains, was an important transport item for the railway. Shortly before the Second World War, a road as far as Wulai was opened. But due to the petrol and diesel shortages during and after the war, manual operations on the railway continued until the mid-1950s, when traffic ceased on large parts of the network. Only a short section south of Wulai remained in operation until 1963. In the meantime, local tourism had established itself around the hot springs and waterfalls in Wulai, and many of the tourists used the “push-carts” rather unofficially to get from Wulai to the waterfalls. In 1963, an official passenger transport service was established on a 1.6 km long remnant of the line. New and more comfortable steel-made carts were introduced and the line was double-tracked due to the high demand in 1964, but the operation continued to be carried out by hand. As the number of tourists increased massively, manual operation was replaced by battery-powered trains in 1974. In order to avoid the cumbersome turning of the locomotive at the respective ends of the route, reversing loops were opened on both ends in 2002, which largely run in tunnels. During two severe typhoons in 2015, the track was badly damaged and operations had to be stopped. The line was repaired and tourist traffic resumed in summer 2017.

Figure 9: The Wulai Scenic Train at the Waterfall Station. Next to the train, the track of the reversing loop enters the tunnel (60$, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons)

Figure 10: The Wulai Scenic Train at Wulai station. There are not many double-tracked railway lines in the world with 545mm gauge (Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons)

Figure 11: This map shows the short section of the Wulai Railway(OpenStreetMap Mitwirkende, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons)