Sunday, December 22, 2013

For trainspotters

The famous logging railway between Chiayi City and Alishan hasn't run since 2009's Typhoon Morakot, but at the city's Beimen Station (北門火車站) you'll find some of the old locomotives and carriages. These days, tourist trains, pulled by diesal locomotives (see picture at the bottom) run between Chiayi TRA Station - which is well served by express trains from north and south Taiwan - and Beimen, with the occasional service to the small town of Zhuqi (嘉義縣竹崎鄉).

The neighbourhood around Beimen Station includes several sites associated with Chiayi's once mighty logging industry, and a number of these have been renovated in the past few years. A former power plant is now a wood-sculpture museum (see this Facebook page), and outside Chiayi Municipal Museum a large pool where tree trunks were kept in water (to prevent them from warping under the sun) is now an eco-pond.

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