CraigFergusonImages

Craig February 14th, 2008

Alishan (阿里山) in the mountains east of Jiayi (嘉義) is one of Taiwan’s top tourist destinations. High mountain tea, panoramic vistas and 1000 year old forests are all must-see attractions in the area, but perhaps the most famous attraction of all is the Alishan Forest Railway (阿里山森林鐵路).

The railway system is an 86km network of narrow gauge (762mm) tracks that runs from Jiayi to Alishan. The main line begins at Jiayi station at an elevation of 30m and ends at Alishan station (2216m). The route from Jiayi to Alishan sees the train cross 77 bridges, go through 49 tunnels, negotiate 1 spiral, 4 switchbacks and gradients as steep as 6.26% as it makes the 71km journey from the subtropical plains through temperate forest and into the sub-alpine mountains. The railway is one of only three of its type remaining in the world.

The earliest recorded narrow gauge railway was constructed in 1556 as a mining railway in the Czech Republic. Initially, all railways were mining railways and it wasn’t until the 17th century that railways were extended out of the mines and onto the surface, although they remained industrial, serving to connect mines to transportation points.

Narrow gauge railways are cheaper to construct, and are most often used in areas where the population density is too low to justify the cost of standard or broad gauge, or in mountainous terrain where the ease of construction and savings in engineering costs  are substantial. The downside is that they are limited in the amount of freight and passengers that can be carried.

The Alishan Forest Railway started life serving the logging industry. From 1895 until 1945, Taiwan was administered by Japan. As Japan’s first overseas colony, the Japanese government set out to make Taiwan a showpiece “model colony” and invested heavily in industry and public works.  In 1899 the Railway Ministry, predecessor to today’s TRA (Taiwan Railway Administration) was created and a rapid expansion of the island’s railways began, with the most notable achievement being the construction of the Western line, linking the major population centers on the west coast and reducing travel time between north and south to a single day.

In 1912, construction began on the Alishan railway, an industrial line to facilitate the logging of cypress and Taiwania, a coniferous tree native to East Asia that first became known to botanists in 1910 after it was discovered in Taiwan’s mountains. Taiwania is the largest tree in Asia, reported to heights of 80 m tall and with a trunk up to at least 3 m diameter. The leaves are needle-like or awl-like and 8-15 mm long on young trees up to about 100 years old, then gradually becoming more scale-like, 3-7 mm long, on mature trees. The cones are small, 15-25 mm long, with about 15-30 thin, fragile scales, each scale with two seeds. The species is now endangered due mainly to illegal logging in China, Burma and Vietnam.

Originally the railway used Shay locomotives built by Lima Locomotive Works of Ohio, USA. The Shay was named after Ephraim Shay (1839-1916) who designed and patented the geared steam locomotive.  Shay locomotives had regular fire-tube boilers offset to the left to leave room for a two or three cylinder “motor,” mounted vertically on the right with longitudinal drive shafts extending fore and aft from the crankshaft at wheel axle height. These shafts had universal joints and square sliding slip joints to accommodate motion of swiveling two axle trucks. Each axle was driven by a separate bevel gear and used no side rods. The Alishan railway first used 18 ton engines and later added 28 ton models to the fleet. A number of these have been preserved for display in various museums in Taiwan (and one in Australia); and one model, #26 built in 1914,  is still used on occasion for short tourist trips on the mountain.

Since the early 1960s, there have been 10 accidents on the Alishan Forest Railway, the worst of which occurred on March 1st, 2003, with 17 fatalities and 156 injuries. The accident occurred shortly after the train pulled out of Alishan station to begin its descent of the mountain.

“Three minutes after departing from Alishan Station, the train began traveling down a gradient. I felt clearly the train was speeding.  I tried desperately to stop the train but the brakes failed. Then the train rammed into the mountain side. I have worked as a train driver for more than 20 years. It was the first time I met this kind of situation,” the train’s driver, Tsai Chen-sun (蔡振森) told reporters after the accident.

Chief prosecutor of Jiayi  Prosecutors’ Office, Luo Chien-hsun (羅建勛), said “The two drivers and the conductor did not check the condition of the stopcock carefully before leaving Alishan Station. That’s why the train’s brakes failed when the train was traveling down the gradient.” The Control Yuan ultimately found that human error was to blame. The train’s engineer, co-engineer and maintenance technician failed to open the air switch valve of the brake pipe according to standard operating procedure. Furthermore, the train master did not confirm that the air brake connection work was completed.

Following the accident, the service was suspended while the investigation was carried out and  repairs and safety work were implemented. The Forestry Bureau was ordered to establish the Alishan Forest Railway Standard Operating Procedures and the Alishan Forest Railway Improvement Plan before approval was granted to reopen the line.

Today, Alishan is once again one of Taiwan’s premier mountain resorts and tourist destinations, seeing upwards of 10 000 visitors a day during peak season. To get a better feel for what travel used to be like, take a look at Extraordinary Journey on an Ordinary Train, first published in 1975. In the meantime, whether you’re a railway buff, hiker or just want to see the sea of clouds phenomena, start planning a getaway to Alishan today.

To view a lot more photos from Alishan, take a look at the Alishan gallery section of this site.

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