Qualla: Taiping Mountain Forest Railway

Taiping Mountain Forest Railway: Introduction

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit OpenStreetMap Mitwirkende, CC BY-SA 3.0. They called it the Bongbong Train - an onomatopoeia for the sound its wheels made rattling over narrow-gauge track laid through mountain forest at nearly 2,000 meters. Commissioned in 1920 and connected to the Luodong Forest Railway four years later, the Taiping Mountain Forest Railway once carried massive cypress and camphor logs down 36.4 kilometers of switchbacks, trestle bridges, and aerial tramways from the cloud forests of Yilan County to the lumber yards below. The logging stopped. The passenger services ended in 1979. Typhoons battered the tracks. But the Bongbong Train refused to disappear entirely, and in September 2018 a restored three-kilometer section reopened, carrying tourists through the same misty landscape where loggers once rode beside stacked timber.

Image: OpenStreetMap Mitwirkende | CC BY-SA 3.0

Taiping Mountain Forest Railway: Built for Timber, Remembered for Sound

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bob Tan, CC BY 4.0. The Japanese colonial administration built the Taiping Mountain Forest Railway to extract the island's valuable hardwoods - hinoki cypress, camphor, and red cypress that grew in dense stands at high elevation. The engineering challenge was formidable: the railway had to descend f...

Image: Bob Tan | CC BY 4.0

Taiping Mountain Forest Railway: Ruins Along the Railbed

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit S8321414, CC BY-SA 4.0. When commercial forestry was phased out on Taiping Mountain, the railway's purpose evaporated. Sections of track fell into disrepair. Trestle bridges, built of wood to span the mountain's ravines, collapsed or rotted. A typhoon in 2012 damaged the sightseeing train service that h...

Image: S8321414 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Taiping Mountain Forest Railway: The Three-Kilometer Revival

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yc9660316, CC BY-SA 4.0. On September 19, 2018, the Bongbong Train ran again. A restored three-kilometer section between Taiping Shanzhuo station and Shigeru station now operates eight trips per day at thirty-minute intervals, each one-way journey taking twenty minutes. The pace is deliberately unhurried...

Image: Yc9660316 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Taiping Mountain Forest Railway: Forest Above, Memory Below

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yc9660316, CC BY-SA 4.0. Taiping Mountain's transformation from logging operation to recreation area mirrors a broader shift in Taiwan's relationship with its mountain forests. The trees that the railway was built to remove are now the reason people come. The same cypress groves that loggers measured in ...

Image: Yc9660316 | CC BY-SA 4.0