International Railroad Discussion > Riding a branch line local in Taiwan

Last Saturday saw beautiful weather in northern Taiwan, so I headed to the Pingxi region for a morning hike to a series of waterfalls and lush tropical jungle.  Afterwards, I rode the Pingxi branch, originally built by the Japanese to reach coal mines in the Keelung River valley.  Today, the line serves the popular tourist towns of Shifen, Pingxi and Jitong, with hourly DMU trains covering the single track.  The first video is from the “railfan’s seat” at the head of a train as it splits the crowd along Shifen Old Street, then follows the river to the East Coast mainline junction to Sandiaoling.  The second video is taken at Houtong, a village on the mainline where I ended my hike.  The E300 and E400 electric locomotives are GE products, seen on a cement train and passenger  train passing the Houtong station.  By the way, a day pass for unlimited travel on the Pingxi branch is about $2.50 US, and the round trip from Taipei to the start of the branch at Ruifang cost roughly two US dollars - about 10% of the cost of a roundtrip of similar distance and duration on my local MBTA Fitchburg line.

Dave

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Nice video work. I can't believe the amount of people out walk and right next to tracks.

Stanley Jackowski
Valrico, FL

More railfans than for that UP thing.

Uncle Joe
Seffner,Fl.

Very nice, the passenger cars in the second video have what look like radiators at one end. Does each car have an individual power source for lighting and air-conditioning?

That was very interesting !!! 
Thank you for sharing !!! :):):)

Thank you for very interesting videos.  Haruo

Hi Dave, good to see you are enjoying Taiwan trains. I have published two books on Taiwan trains. The Taiwan Railway 1966-1970 and The Taiwan Railway 1971-2002. You can buy the first one at the Formosa Bookstore near NTU in Taipei but the second one is sold out. Enjoy.

GN1969 Wrote:
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> Hi Dave, good to see you are enjoying Taiwan
> trains. I have published two books on Taiwan
> trains. The Taiwan Railway 1966-1970 and The
> Taiwan Railway 1971-2002. You can buy the first
> one at the Formosa Bookstore near NTU in Taipei
> but the second one is sold out. Enjoy.

Thanks for the tip GN1969....I’ll keep an eye out for the book next time I’m in Taiwan.

Dave