THE RAILWAY
The Alishan Forest Railway: A Logging Line Turned Wonder
Switchbacks, a spiral loop and a 2,000-metre climb — the Japanese-built railway that is an attraction in its own right.
See Alishan tours on GetYourGuide ↗Built to haul cypress
The Alishan Forest Railway did not begin as a tourist attraction. It was built under the Japanese colonial government to extract the mountain's red cypress and Taiwania timber, and its tracks reached Fenqihu in 1912 and Zhaoping in 1913, completing the main line. For decades the railway hauled ancient trees down the mountain, until logging ended and the line, and the forest, were left to become something else.
An engineering marvel
What makes the railway extraordinary is how it climbs. Over an 86-kilometre network of 762 mm narrow-gauge track it rises from around 30 metres to 2,451 metres, through dozens of tunnels and wooden bridges, at gradients up to 6.26 percent. Where the slope defeats even a spiral, the train uses Z-shaped switchbacks, pulling forward, stopping, then reversing up the next grade, plus a spiral loop at Dulishan. Taiwan's Ministry of Culture has listed the railway as a potential World Heritage Site.
A long closure, and a reopening
The railway's recent history has been hard. Typhoons repeatedly battered the main line, and Typhoon Morakot in 2009 heavily damaged it. The section from Chiayi to Fenqihu reopened in 2014, and the rest of the main line to Alishan reopened in July 2024, after Tunnel 42 was completed. That makes riding the whole railway up the mountain a fresh possibility again.
Riding it today
For visitors, the railway is both transport and attraction. You can ride the main line between Chiayi and Alishan for a slow, scenic climb, and on the mountain the short branch lines, the pre-dawn Zhushan sunrise train and the Zhaoping and Shenmu lines, serve the forest. Check the railway office's current notice for how far the main line runs on your date. Riding at least one leg by rail connects you to the history of the place: a line built to cut down a forest that now carries people up to see what remains of it.