The Japanese occupiers discovered large deposits of red cypresses in the mountains northeast of Taichung, which were not as extensive as in Alishan, but of better quality. In addition, there were large deposits of other trees, which could be used for construction, firewood as well as charcoal production. Taichung was already one of the largest cities in Taiwan at the beginning of the occupation and therefore the area around Baxianshan, which was accessible via an approx. 60 km long valley (Dajia River), was not as remote as the other forest areas in which the Japanese later opened forest railways. The forestry operations and the forest railway network were privately owned until the Second World War, so there are hardly any records left from this time and some of the history of the railway still lies in the dark.

The logging in Baxianshan probably began in 1915 at the latest, the transport was carried out as usual initially by slide, sledge and mountain river. At around the same time, the Taichung Light Railway Company was founded in 1913, which set up a 100km long network of “push-cart” railways in ~ 545mm gauge around Taichung (such railways were very common in Taiwan, for more information on “push-cart” railways, please click on the menu item in the menu bar above). This company also built an approx. 13 km long branch line from Fengyuan station on the state railway (Taichung or Mountain Line, see menu item Lines –> Main Lines) with a 762 mm track width into the lower and still quite wide and flat section of the Dajia valley. Therefore, the line that ran along the left side of the valley only had a maximum gradient of 1.6% and a minimum radius of 200m. The exact opening date is unknown, as is whether the line was operated with locomotives from the start or initially by hand just as the company's other lines. The different choice of track gauge as well as the laid rails with 12kg / m at least suggest that operation with locomotives was at least planned relatively soon after the opening. Another source says that the line was initially built in ~ 545mm gauge and was re-gauge to 762mm in 1924.

The railway line did not primarily focus on transporting wood, but mainly served passenger transport (especially visitors to the hot springs that existed in the valley) as well as the transport of agricultural goods in the lower section of the valley, which was already quite densely populated at that time. On the 11.7km long section from Fengyuan to Tuniu there was heavy traffic (55,000t of goods and 580,000 passengers in 1950!), In Tuniu there was a manually operated route across the river to Dongshi, the main town of the valley with many hot springs. The 1.4 km long remaining section to Zhumuchang ("wood storage area") was mainly used for wood transport. This is illustrated by the fact that there were 14 pairs of trains between Fengyuan and Tuniu in 1939 (39 to 43 minutes travel time), but only one and a half of them were running to Zhumuchang, where the railway's workshop was located.

A private company, but not the Taichung Light Railway also handled the logging. In the beginning, however, there were always attacks by natives, and the wood was repeatedly severely damaged during transport on the mountain stream to Zhumuchang. Thus, a “push-cart” line through the Dajia Valley from Tuniu to Jiuliangqi at the foot of the Baxian (“Eight Immortals”) Mountains was built relatively quickly (probably in 1917). The local administration of the forest company was located in Jiuliangqi; it later developed into the operational centre of the forest railway. Latest by 1927, a “real” railway line was laid through the valley, which then connected to the Taichung Light Railway (TLR) in Zhumuchang and no longer in Tuniu. Nevertheless, the route initially followed the TLR 1.5 km to Tuniu, where there was a hairpin without any operational necessity, until the railway led back towards the end of the valley. The valley section of the forest railway had a total length of approx. 45 km, gradients of up to 4.1% and a minimum radius of 20 m (!), Rails with 9 kg / m were used. Behind Jiuliangqi, the train led about 1.5 km to the foot of the steep mountains. A 1.15km long cable car then led up to the mountain, followed by a short section of track and another 1.28km long cable car. Another 16km long route followed there, as well as another 500m long cable car and finally another 14km long route on the mountain. The total network without the TLR had a length of around 75km! The isolated stretches on the mountain were equipped with very light rails (6kg / m), a minimum radius of 20m and many trestle bridges.

On the valley section of the forest railway there was only one daily pair of passenger trains with a small combustion engine, which with a travel time of 3h40min for 45km was almost exclusively aimed at the forest workers. With the construction of the railway line, the volume of wood extracted from Baxianshan increased massively. From 836m³ in 1915, it surged to 15,000m³ in 1927, the high point was reached in 1943 with 43,790m³. In the 1920s, some hydropower plants and water collection instalments to irrigate the sugar cane fields in the lowlands around Taichung were built in the Dajia Valley in the river valley, and the railway was probably also used for transport during the construction works. In Xinshan, around 1km up the valley from Jiuliangqi, a cable car with an imposing wooden viaduct was built up into the mountains in 1938. However, it was destroyed in a forest fire after ten years in operation and was never rebuilt. The forest company established large tree nurseries between Tuniu and Zhumuchang, which were served by an extensive network of “push-cart” lines.

Until the Second World War, there were two separate railways in the valley with different private owners and interests. It was not until 1942 that both railways were taken over by the government, mostly for strategic reasons. The Taichung Light Railway, however, went to the national transport authority, whereas the forest railway including its valley section went to the national forest department. Only in 1947, the national forest department also took over the lower section of the valley railway. After the war, operations continued as before, only the wooden trains could now run through directly to the state railway in Fengyuan without a handover in Zhumuchang from one company to the other. In terms of passenger traffic, however, the 14 pairs of trains to Tuniu remained, although more pairs of trains were extended to Zhumuchang, as the population density in the middle section of the valley also increased due to the mass exodus of the Kuomintang and their supporters from the mainland to Taiwan. At the same time, not all trains ran through to Fengyuan, but rather ended in Puzi approx. 3.7 km before Fengyuan. Puzi was the terminus of a sugar railway with a direct connection to Taichung, the destination of most of the passengers from the valley.

In order to better connect the isolated east coast of the island to the densely populated west coast, the government decided in the early 1950s to build a road from Taichung over the high mountain ranges to Hualien (today's state road No. 8) after the construction of a railway line was considered too expensive (see menu item Lines -> Planned Lines). For road construction and the construction of further dams and hydropower plants in the mountains, the state railway laid a new branch line in 1,067mm from Fengyuan to Dongshi in 1956, which in the lower section partially used the line bedding the 762mm railway (see Dongshi Line iunder menu item Lines -> Branch Lines). Meitsi was therefore the new transfer point between the762mm forest railway and the 1,067mm state railway. Due to the construction of the road in the mountains, the felled wood could now be transported directly by truck and the entire forest railway including the lower Meitsi - Zhumuchang valley section ceased operations in 1959. Anyway, in 1963 complete logging ended, making Baxianshan the first large forest operations in Taiwan to cease operations. The branch line of the state railway to Dongshi did not survive for long either; it was closed in 1991 and converted into a cycle path. Remnants of the forest railway have nearly disappeared completely more than 50 years after its closure. Only in Tuniu, a small park with some information boards located at the former train station reminds of the once so important forest railway line in the Dajia Valley.

Even less clear than the history of the forest railway (until 1947 rather two railways) is the information of the locomotives that were used on the railways. Two locomotives from the early days of the Taichung Light Railway were recorded: most probably a 13t 0-6-0T from Nippon Sharyo (serial number 141, built in 1925), which was directly delivered to the railway. In addition, a 13t heavy, 70PS strong 0-6-0T from O&K (serial number 10851) which was taken over as a used engine from one of the sugar railway was most likely used. Reports from the following years mention a total of three steam locomotives without describing them in more detail (possibly also O&K locomotives with the wheel arrangement 0-6-0T and serial numbers 10876 and 10877, which came used from the Ryobi Light Railway in Japan or maybe some locomotives from Nippon Sharyo). Looking at the transportation figures, the total number of three steam locomotives seems far too low, especially since there are no railcars recorded for the TLR. Probably more used locomotives were purchased or borrowed from the many sugar railways on Taiwan Island. In Puzi, the TLR had a direct connection to the sugar railway of the Taichung sugar factory. The sugar factories only needed large parts of their locomotive stock during the harvest season and maybe passed some of the locomotives to the TLR during non-harvest times. After the war, some sources record up to five steam locomotives (also without further details). Various sources say that a part of the remaining steam locomotives probably went to the Luodong Forest Railway on the east coast after the end of service on the Baxianshan Forest Railway in 1959.

Steam locomotives most probably never ran on the forest railway’s valley section from Zhumuchang to Jiuliangqi. Pictures from the opening year 1926 only combustion engines. The forest railway had a total number of 25 locomotives from Plymouth, including 11 with 7 tons and 46hp power, which could only be used on the valley route around Jiuliangqi (they were too heavy for the cable car to be transported up the mountain). The remaining 14 locomotives weighed 4 tons, had 30hp and were probably only used on isolated mountain routes. In addition, there were probably three larger 15ton diesel locomotives with two axles and a jackshaft drive (further details not known). A draisine with a combustion engine was probably sufficient for passenger transport. In October 1951, the national forest department ordered 18 combustion locomotives (15 with 7tons each, 3 with 4.5t each) from Kato, of which one or the other might also have been sent to Baxianshan (the allocation of the locomotives to the individual Forest railways is unfortunately not recorded).

 

In the mountains of Taipingshan, southeast of Luodong near Yilan, the Japanes occupiers discovered abundant amounts of large trees. Latest by 1915, they started to exploit the wood deposits. As for most of the other forest companies, the logs were initially brought down into the valley with slides or sledges. From there, the felled trees were transported by rafting on the Lanyang mountain river to the coast at Luodong. This was very inefficient and the valuable wood was often severely damaged. To make matters worse, the Taiwan Electric Co., Ltd. planned the construction of several dams and power stations that withdrew so much water from the Lanyang River that rafting would no longer be possible. For the construction between 1918 and 1921, the electricity company built a 19.36km long 762mm line from Tiansongpi to Tucheng. In Tiansongpi there was a connection to the sugar railway of the Tainan Sugar Company, which in turn had a connection to the Yilan Line of the state railway from 1919 on. The forest company was now under pressure to act. It built a sawmill in Zhulin north of the Luodong state railway station, including an artificial lake for storing the logs, and connected the sawmill to the Weiziwai train station on the sugar railway. The sawmill was in turn connected to Luodong station via a cape gauge siding. In addition, the company took over the Waiziwai - Tiansongpi section from the sugar railway as well as the Tiansongpi - Tucheng section from the electricity company and built a small depot with a locomotive shed next to the sawmill. On January 27, 1924, the Luodong Forest Railway then started operations from Zhuli to Tucheng, and the Taipingshan Forest Railway with several cable cars and railway lines connected at the terminus of the Luodong Forest Railway in Tuchang.

The 36.7 km long line runs largely parallel to the Lanyang River, in the lower section partly also in the extensive river bed of the river itself on trestle bridges. This has been a problem for the railway throughout its whole life, as the river swells very strongly during the typhoon seasons and damaged the line every year. In the upper section, steep mountain slopes come right up to the river. There were a total number of 138 bridges on the route (of which 22 were larger, mostly trestle bridges, some of which were up to 600m in length), ten stations and seven tunnels; the maximum gradient was 2.5%.

The railway was initially limited to transportation of logs. On May 18, 1926, public passenger transport was started. Passenger trains were used by the local population, but also increasingly by tourists. Initially, there were three mixed trains per day and direction with a travel time of 2.5 hours. Logs were transported on separate trains without (official) passenger transport. In 1926, 22,800m³ of wood was transported, a year later it was already over 35,000m³ and figures were rising from year to year until1943, when a preliminary record with 82,142m³ was reached. After the war, the figures fell sharply at first (1946: 12,500m³) before they reached new record numbers, the absolute high point was recorded in 1959 with 93,000m³. In addition, the railway transported all the material for the forest railways in Taipingshan, thus the overall volume of goods including wood was 243,000 t! With the millions of supporters of the Kuomintang who fled the mainland to Taiwan after the war and often settled on the still sparsely populated east coast, the number of passengers also rose. The record was in 1949 with 235,000 passengers; in the 1950s, more than 150,000 passengers still used the railway per year, and there were 6-7 trains every day. For a 762mm narrow-gauge railway, which was operated exclusively with small, three-axle tank locomotives, this was an enormous amount.

However, the high transport volume did not last long. From the early 1960s, logging fell sharply, since large parts of the mountains around Taipingshan were now almost completely deforested. The remaining logs were increasingly transported away by truck on the newly built roads. The Luodong Forest Railway, like the Alishan Forest Railway, therefore tried to concentrate on passenger transport and had particular tourists in its focus. For this purpose, the 762mm route from Zhulin to the state railway station in Luodong was extended so that passengers could change trains directly and did not have to walk from Luodong to Zhulin. In addition, a diesel railcar was taken over from the Alishan Forest Railway in order to massively reduce the travel time compared to the previously steam hauled goods train with attached passenger coaches. However, this could not save the railway from its closure. After 1976 the log transport on the railway tended towards zero and the route along the mountain river was repeatedly damaged by floods (most recently in 1978 large parts of the route were washed away after a typhoon). Thus, the remaining passenger traffic was stopped on August 1, 1979.

If the line had survived another ten years, it might have been Taiwan's second major railway attraction alongside the Alishan Forest Railway. Some tunnels and parts of the track bed outside of Luodong were preserved. In Luodong, a park was laid out on the site of the former railway station and sawmill, in which five former steam locomotives are put on display. Another steam locomotive and the diesel railcar with a trailer that was used in the 1970s are also on display in Tucheng. The railway station buildings of Dazhou, Tiansongpi and Tucheng also survived, as well as a turntable and a water tower in Tiansongpi. A few years ago, there was a plan to rebuild a 3.9 km long section around the former Tiansongpi station and to operate tourist traffic there. If tourist traffic were successful, the route would have even be reactivated in its entire length (which is probably more of a pipe dream). Apparently, the project has fallen asleep; at least I could not find any more current information about it on the net.

While the history of the railway line is fairly well known, there are many gaps, ambiguities and inconsistencies when it comes to the steam locomotives used by the railway. Here I repeat Michael Reilly's assumption from his book "Narrow gauge railways of Taiwan". The locomotives from the early days until the opening of the complete railway line in 1924 are relatively secure. Probably in 1923 or 1924 three tank locomotives with the wheel arrangement 0-6-0T and a weight of 15t were ordered from Nippon Sharyo and delivered (factory numbers 99 - 101, classified at the Luodong Forest Railway under the numbers 1 - 3). One was probably damaged so badly in an accident relatively soon after it was purchased that it probably had to be scrapped. It is questionable whether the railway was able to handle the extensive traffic with only two locomotives. However, new locomotives are only recorded for 1933, when plans were made to expand logging in Taipingshan. Those were two used tank locomotives in the 0-6-0T wheel arrangement purchased from the Alishan Forest Railway: one Andrew Barclay (year of construction 1911, serial number 1251, classified as No. 5) and one with a 20t heavy Kawasaki (year of construction 1914, serial number 126, classified as No. 6). Locomotive numbers 4 and most probably 10 were not used because the Chinese pronunciation of the numerals "four" and "ten" is similar to the pronunciation of the word "death". Therefore, it is still possible that the railway operated with only two or three locomotives until 1933. If necessary, locomotives were also borrowed from the sugar cane railways around Luodong which connected to the Luodong Forest Railway. The sugar railways locomotives were only fully utilized during harvest time, the rest of the time they were mostly idle. Perhaps they helped on the forest railway during this time, because the logs could be temporarily stored in a water basin in Tucheng. During the war, the railway then received two brand new, 13t or 15t heavy 0-6-0T from Kawasaki in 1941 (factory numbers 2544 and 2545), which were classified as No. 8 and 9. A locomotive number seven is not recorded.

When logging increased massively after the war, another five steam locomotives came to the Luodong Forest Railway. There are various theories: Taichung Light Railway locomotives (see Baxianshan Forest Railway), Alishan Railway locomotives, decommissioned locomotives from the state Taitung/East Coast Line or from sugar cane railways, new builts from Taiwan Machinery Corp.... . The only thing that is certain is that they were numbered as nos. 11 – 15. Michael Reilly suspects that no. 11 is a new built by Taiwan Machinery Corp. from 1948, no. 12 and 13 are Nippon Sharyo locomotives that came to Luodong between 1948 and 1951 (including at least one of the Taichung Light Railway), No. 14 was the second Andrew Barclay locomotive from the Alishan Forest Railway which came to Luodong in 1951. No. 15 is possibly another Nippon Sharyo loco, which may have come used from a sugar railway that received large shipments of new tank locos from Belgium in 1948. In 1971, a diesel railcar and two matching passenger trailers were purchased from the Alishan Forest Railway for passenger transport. In the last years of operation of the railway, the locomotives nos. 2, 8, 9, 11, 12 and 15 were still used. In and around Luodong, seven steam locomotives are set up on display. However, it is doubtful whether they are all Luodong Forest Railway locomotives, even if the information boards say so.

Here is another interesting link to a Japanese site with historical pictures, maps and a search for traces of the Luodong and Taipingshan Forest Railways. Click the button on the bottom right to continue

 

The Taipingshan Forest Railway was the second largest forest railway in Taiwan after the Alishan Forest Railway and it was the first to introduce a combined system of railway lines and ropeways, which was then used on almost all other forest railways in Taiwan. At peak times, the network consisted of railway lines and ropeways with a total length of more than 70 km (see map below); more than a dozen small combustion locomotives were in use.

In 1914, the Japanese discovered particularly old and valuable cypresses around Taipingshan with a wood quality even better than in the already developed area around Alishan. Logging began immediately and by 1915, around 9,000m³ of wood had already been brought down to the valley. The (old) logging camp of Taipingshan was built at the end of a valley at an altitude of approx. 1,400m. The felled logs from the surrounding mountains were brought here on slides or sledges. As soon as the mountain stream had enough water, the logs were floated to Tucheng, where they could then be transported further down the Lanyang River to Luodong. With the opening of the Luodong Forest Railway (see below) in 1924, the logs were transported from Tucheng to Luodong by rail. In the same year, the first cable car was built from Tucheng up to the mountains, from where tracks ran along the mountain slopes. The wagons on the mountain lines were initially pushed by humans or pulled by water buffaloes. The ropeway was the first one of its kind to be used in a forestry enterprise in Taiwan and quickly spread to other forestry enterprises in Taiwan. In 1920, 19,345m³ of trunk wood could be produced, in 1926 22,800m³ and in 1927 35,000m³. From 1928 on, the first Plymouth combustion locomotives (probably still powered by charcoal gas) were used on the network. Despite the continued expansion of the network to the south, the stocks of wood continued to run out. However, in the mountains east of the old camp, there were still large deposits that would have been very difficult to connect to the old network by rail.

In 1935, a new, large logging camp (including a school!) were set up on the east side of Taipingshan. It was connected to Tucheng station of the Luodong Forest Railway by a combination of three ropeways and four isolated lines. The ropeways not only allowed the transport of logs, instead the wagons could be attached together with the logs and the cumbersome reloading was no longer necessary. There were also cabins for passenger transport, which were used according to a fixed timetable. Thanks to the payload of 5t, the light combustion locomotives could also be transported without having to dismantle them into individual parts. The combination of ropeways and railway lines up to the mountain was called the Taipingshan Line, it was 16.25 km long and climbed around 1,250 meters in height. Starting from Taipingshan, there were then two long branch lines: the Sanxian Line to the east and the Maoxing Line to the southwest with probably another, isolated line that was also connected via a ropeway. In addition, parts of the old network were probably connected to the new network via the Jianqing Line. However, other parts of the old network and the old ropeway to Tucheng were abandoned (see map below).

The railway reached its first peak in 1943, when 82,142m³ of logs were transported. Due to the war, numbers fell sharply to only 12,500m³ in 1946. However, wood continued to play an important role as an important export good and thus the network was expanded again and new locomotives were procured. In 1959, the absolute peak was finally reached with 93,000m³ of transported logs.

After that, however, there was a steady decline, at the end of the 1960s the transported logs halved to only approx. 40,000m³. In the late 1970s, a road was built to Taipingshan, and the Taipingshan Line with its combination of cable cars and railways was closed. In 1973, parts of the network (Qingfeng Line) of the neighboring Dayuanshan Forest Railway (see below) were connected to the Taipingshan Forest Railway. The Dayuanshan Forest Railway handed over their operations to the Taipingshan Forest Railway and closed large other parts of their network. In 1982, the timber production around Taipingshan officially ended, the railway operations had probably ceased already in 1979. The lines were not dismantled, but left to decay. The area around Taipingshan has been turned into a recreation area for tourism. A 3.2 km long section of the former Maoxing Line was reactivated for tourist traffic in 1991, but the line went out of service again in 2012 after various typhoons and earthquakes has seriously damaged the line. Since 2018, there will probably be operation again on a shorter section. Hiking trails have been laid along various other sections of the route, where remains of the lines and bridges can still be seen.

At least 15 small locomotives with internal combustion engines operated on the network of the Taipingshan Forest Railway (at first probably using charcoal gas, later converted to gasoline or diesel engines). However, due to the mostly rather opaque distribution policy of the state forestry office, it is possible that even more locomotives operated on the network (sometimes sources speak of more than 20 locomotives that were in use after the war). The first two locomotives were used on the old network as early as 1928; they were small 3-ton locomotives from Plymouth. Two years later, two more of these locomotives came onto the old network (numbered as P1 – P3 and P5; the “4” was left out because the pronunciation of the numeral “four” in Chinese is similar to the pronunciation of the word “death”). The fleet was supplemented in 1932 by a 4.5t small locomotive from Kato. All five locomotives were transferred to the new network in 1935 and were still in use there in 1954 on the routes between the cable car stations. With the opening of the new network, four 4.5-ton Kato locomotives were added (one each in 1935, 1937 and 1942). After the war, in 1951/52 at least seven Kato locomotives weighing 4.5 or 5 tons from a collective order of the state forestry office came to Taipingshan.

 

The Dayuanshan Forest Railway is usually not listed as a separate forest railway in the books or documents, since it was connected to the Taipingshan Forest Railway in 1973, which thus took over the remaining network of the Dayuanshan Forest Railway (Qingfeng Line). Unfortunately, I could not find any information about the history of the railway and the locomotives used, I was only able to find some data of the line network. The system began with a ropeway at the foot of the mountains southwest of Luodong. Old maps show a hand-operated railway line at the foot of Dayuan Mountain, possibly connecting the valley station of the ropeway with the extensive network of 762mm push-cart lines around Luodong/Yilan. After the first two ropeway sections, the usual combination of isolated routes and further ropeway sections followed. At Cuifeng Lake, another ropeway or incline branched off to an isolated route (see map below).

Unfortunately, I did not find any further information about the network of the Dayuanshan Forest Railway. At the beginning of the 1970s, the area was probably largely deforested. Nevertheless, the Qingfeng Line was connected to the Sanxian Line of the Taipingshan Forest Railway in 1973 and the operation of the Dayuanshan Forest Railway was handed over to the Taipingshan Forest Railway. The other lines of the Dayuanshan Forest Railway including the ropeway/incline sections were closed immediately after the connection. At the latest with the end of operations on the Taipingshan Forest Railway in 1979, operations on the Qingfeng Line, the remainder of the Dayuanshan Forest Railway, also ceased.

 

In 1943, the Lampang Forestry Corporation, which belonged to the Hualien Port Development Co., built a first 6 km long route towards the western mountains to exploit the timber resources there. After the war, the line was taken over by the state forestry office, which massively expanded the network. Between 1951 and 1960, three lines with a total length of around 45 km and three ropeways with a total length of 4.56 km were built, including what was then the longest ropeway in East Asia at around 1.6 km without intermediate supports. The mountain line had 222 bridges and five tunnels and a maximum gradient of 2%, plus two branch lines. The highest point of the system was around 2,000m above sea level. In 1971 another branch line was added. The valley station was initially connected to the network of the sugar railway of the Hualien sugar factory, in 1951 it was connected to the state railway line in Tianpu. At the end of the 1970s, the volume dropped sharply and some forest areas including the railway lines were handed over to private companies to exploit the last wood reserves. In 1989, the remaining operations finally stopped. Other sources say that the forest railway ceased operations in 1982 when the Taitung Line was regauged. Presumably, this only refers to the connecting route from the state railway to just before the first ropeway station, the actual forest railway up on the mountain was definitely in operation for several years longer (pictures of the mountain line dating from 1986 as well as pictures from the valley section dated from 1985 can be found in the internet). The majority of the rails and locomotives remained on the mountain, where nature takes them back. The valley station of the ropeway and other facilities at the foot of the mountain have long since disappeared and were overbuilt with the sprawling suburbs of Hualien. Recently, there were plans to rebuild the ropeways, but rather a modern cable car that only follows the old ropeways in parts. There are no plans to restart parts of the rail network.

Unfortunately, little information is known about the locomotives used on the railway. Since the forest railway initially only connected to the state railway via the Hualien sugar railway, the logs were probably transported by the sugar railway. With the opening of a separate connection to the state railway in Tianpu, American steam locomotives were said to be used. Presumably, like for the Harun Forest Railway, these were former state railway locomotives of the Vulcan class LCK20 used on the line between Hualien and Taitung, which were loaned to the forest railway or later sold. On the mountain line, as with almost all other forest railways in Taiwan, the classic 4.5t small locomotives from Kato were used. Later, the classic 7t Kato small locomotives replaced the steam engines on the valley section.

A Japanese railway enthusiast brought back the following sightings of ten locomotives on the mountain line in 1985:

Since the forest railway was in operation until the late 1980s, there are some photo and video documents from the last few years of operation. They give a great impression of the forest railways in Taiwan (until the mid-1980s, foreigners were not allowed to visit the forest railways; the authorities feared that they would bring communist ideas to the remote mountain regions and their inhabitants). If you are interested, definitely have a look at the following links, there are sometimes breathtaking, sometimes frightening pictures:

• [web.archive.org]: Japanese site with breathtaking yet sometimes frightening operational pictures of the Lanshan Forest Railway from 1985 (a few screenshots are shown in the figures above). Be sure to check it out, the site is a real treasure (don't forget to click the Next button at the bottom right. There are dozens of pages with pictures)!
• [blog.xuite.net]: Lots of pictures from the 1980s of a hiking trip alongside the Lanshan Forest Railway, which was still in operation at the time. A few pictures also show the Lintian Forest Railway and the Taipingshan Railway
• [news.ltn.com.tw]: Although this article from a Taiwanese newspaper focusses on the planned (re)construction of a cable car in the area of the Lanshan Forest Railway, it also shows historical pictures from the operating period of the railway.
• [youtu.be]: Historical film from the operating period of Lanshan Forest Railway on Youtube. Absolutely worth seeing!

 

In 1930, the Hualien Port Timber Co., Ltd., probably a subsidiary of the Hualien Port Development Co., was founded to exploit the timber deposits in the mountains south-east of Hualien. For this purpose, as in Lintianshan, a 6 km long connecting line was built from the state East Coast Line (Pinghe train station) to the foot of the mountains. A system of five ropeways (total length 4.7 km) and several isolated railway lines connected there. The first ropeway section was almost 1.5 km long and climbed 687 meters. After the war, the railway and forestry operations was taken over by the State Forestry Bureau. This again expanded the route network, the last addition followed in 1964 with the fifth ropeway, the entire network of the forest railway reached a length of 49.51km, the highest point of the network was around 2,400m above sea level! Another source (school project of the primary school in Zhuqiang) gives at least different opening dates for the cable cars:

From 1977 on, the logging dropped sharply and with the re-gauging of the East Coast Line in 1982, operations on the 6 km long valley section were suspended. Nevertheless, the sections on the mountain and the ropeways remained in operation. There are still pictures of the railway operations dated from 1986 (see links below). As in Lanshan, individual areas and sections on top of the mountain were handed over to private companies to exploit the last wood reserves. In 1989, the logging finally ceased. The forest railway of Muguashan was the last forest railway in Taiwan to be in operation (apart from, of course, the Alishan Forest Railway, which by then had not been transporting timber for a long time, but was only operated for tourist traffic, as it is doing today), the commercial logging in Taiwan finally ended in 1991. Most of the tracks on top of the mountains are still in place, but nature has largely reclaimed the area. In the meantime, there were plans to build a modern, tourist cable car, which would partly run along the former routes and cable cars, but there are no plans for the railway lines to be put back into operation.

The area around Muguashan has become a popular recreation area. A park has been laid out in Chihnan with reminiscents of the forest railways. There, you can find a Nippon Sharyo steam engine that is believed to have once operated on the Luodong Forest Railway as well as the former Shay-Lok No. 16 of Alishan Forest Railway. For some time in the past, a small railway was set up on a small circuit, mainly for children, and the carriages were pulled by one of the Schöma locomotives that formerly operated on the Muguashan Forest Railway. However, operations were discontinued a few years ago and everything seems to be rotting away now.

Since the forest railway was in operation until the late 1980s, there are some photo and video documents from the last few years of operation. They give a great impression of the forest railways in Taiwan (until the mid-1980s, foreigners were not allowed to visit the forest railways; the authorities feared that they would bring communist ideas to the remote mountain regions and their inhabitants). If you are interested, definitely have a look at the following links, there are sometimes breathtaking, sometimes frightening pictures:

• [web.archive.org]: Japanese site with breathtaking and sometimes frightening operational pictures of the Harun Forest Railway from 1986 (I already showed a few screenshots above). Be sure to check it out, the site is a real treasure (don't forget to click the Next button at the bottom right. There are dozens of pages with pictures)!
• [web.archive.org]: Taiwanese page about the book described above. It also shows some, sometimes breathtaking, operational photos from the forest railway which are included in the book.
• [youtu.be]: A film by the state forest agency probably from 1974. The quality isn't particularly good, the editing and the music take some getting used to, but it's still absolutely worth watching it.
• [youtu.be]: Another Taiwanese film about the forest railway.

 

section under construction