Thursday, April 10, 2008

Tracks and other traces of Taiwan's sugar railways (China Post)

In this era of high-speed trains, it seems odd to recall that a rail network originally built to haul sugarcane used to be one of Taiwan's major transportation systems.

To write this article, I visited three former Taiwan Sugar Corp. railway stations. Here's a photo the China Post didn't use. It's of the front of the old Yijhu station, which I describe as "dilapidated yet picturesque."
I've been interested in industrial archaeology ever since a high-school geography teacher introduced me to the term. See also this article from late 2006: Old factories are the new tourist hotspots.

3 comments:

David said...

Very interesting, dude.

Steven Crook... said...

Thanks David.

Taiwan Urban Exploration said...

Nice article. I've been spending a lot of time myself at the abandoned sugar mills and along their associated network of railways. I am heavily interested in Industrial Archaeology and an activity called "UrbEx" or urban Exploration, so it is wonderful to find an article such as yours.


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