The South-North Railway: In 1908, a Single Line Stitched the Island Together and Left Behind the Speed of Colonialism

30-Second Overview: On April 20, 1908, the South-North Railway from Keelung to Takao was completed; on October 24 of the same year, the Taiwan Governor-General’s Office held the completion ceremony in Taichung Park. This line not only delivered rice, sugar, and timber to the ports faster, but also enabled agricultural income growth in some cities connected to the railway. It is not a simple story of modernization, but a line that simultaneously amplified imperial control, local opportunities, and social disparities.

Figure: Architecture of the 1908 South-North Railway Opening Ceremony; Taiwan Historical Culture Revival Association, Public domain, provided via Wikimedia Commons.

In 1887, Liu Ming-chuan established the General Bureau of Taiwan Railway Commerce in Dadaocheng, Taipei. On April 20, 1908, the South-North Line from Keelung to Takao (now Kaohsiung) was fully completed. On October 24, the Taiwan Governor-General’s Office held the completion ceremony in Taichung Park. This railway appears to be a transportation project, but in reality, it was three things simultaneously: connecting the north and south of the island, sending agricultural products to ports, and inscribing the colonial government’s speed over land and population into the landscape. ^{1 2}

The most counter-intuitive aspect lies here: the South-North Railway was originally designed as a machine for imperial export, yet it also allowed some Taiwanese farmers to access markets more easily, even increasing agricultural income. It is not a linear story of "colonialism bringing modernization," nor is it a linear story of "railways serving only plunder." It is a line that simultaneously expanded control and opportunity.

What Liu Ming-chuan Left Was Not a Completed South-North Line

Liu Ming-chuan is often placed on the first page of Taiwan’s railway story, but what he left was an unfinished starting point. The Qing Dynasty began constructing the railway from Taipei to Keelung in 1887, completing the approximately 28-kilometer Taipei–Keelung line in 1891. Plans to extend the line toward Taoyuan and Hsinchu stagnated following Liu Ming-chuan’s removal from office. ³

The difficulties of this early railway were not merely a lack of funds. The route’s gradients were too steep, technology relied on foreign technicians, and the successors had to deal with the problem that the existing line was not suitable for long-term operation. After Japan took over Taiwan in 1895, it initially treated the railway as military transport, before shifting to general transport managed by civil administrative organs. ^{2 4}

Thus, "Taiwan’s First Railway" and "Taiwan’s South-North Railway" are not the same thing. The former is a short segment from the Liu Ming-chuan era; the latter is the north-south trunk line redesigned by the Japanese colonial government using state finance and constructed in sections after 1899.

📝 Curator’s Note: Viewing Liu Ming-chuan’s short segment alongside the 1908 South-North Line reveals that "the first railway" and "completing a railway system" are actually two different things; the former is a starting point, while the latter is the test of whether a state can maintain, operate, and distribute speed over the long term.

From Private Company Back to State Project

In the early years of Japanese rule, the South-North Railway was not initially built solely with government funds. In 1896, Japan attempted to establish the Taiwan Railway Company, planning to repair the existing railway, construct the route from Hsinchu to Takao, and even prepare land and interest subsidies. However, the company ultimately failed to be formally established, as private capital could not bear the scale of the project. ⁴

Goto Shinpei, who arrived in Taiwan in 1898, judged that railway construction needed to be coordinated with the port development in Keelung for the project to generate transport revenue. This kind of upfront investment could not be borne by private companies alone. The Japanese Diet therefore passed the "Taiwan Public Bonds Act," in which out of a total public bond amount of 35 million yen, 28.8 million yen were allocated for the South-North Railway. ⁴

This was a crucial turning point: the South-North Railway did not grow naturally from the market, but was a project driven by the colonial state through public bonds, bureaucratic institutions, and military and economic goals. In 1899, the Temporary Taiwan Railway Construction Department was established. In November of the same year, the Taiwan Governor-General’s Office Railway Department was established, bringing construction, operation, maintenance, and private railways under a single management system. ⁴

The organizational design of the Railway Department also reveals the nature of this project. It was not only responsible for laying tracks, but also for handling train transport, route maintenance, and private railways used for the sugar, forestry, and mining industries. The South-North Line was therefore not an isolated passenger line, but a transport network connecting ports, production areas, factories, and branch lines.

"Accelerated Extension" and the Cost in the Mountains

In May 1899, Kinsuke Hasegawa led the engineering work advancing from both the north and south ends. The route adopted the practice of opening sections as soon as they were completed, allowing the railway to generate operating income while under construction. Official historical records summarize this policy as the "Principle of Accelerated Extension." ⁴

But speed was not free. The Mountain Line between Sanyi and Fengyuan had to pass through the hills and fault terrain of Miaoli and Taichung. The section that later became the Old Mountain Line included bridges and tunnels. The National Cultural Assets Network records that the 1935 Central Taiwan Earthquake severely damaged the bridges and tunnels between Shiliufen Station and Taichung, halting railway operations for three years of repair until service resumed in 1938. ⁵

One tunnel took five years and cost over 4.2 million yen, accounting for about one-sixth of the entire South-North Railway project budget. This number pulls "modernization" back from an abstract noun to the rock face: every kilometer required material, labor hours, and risk, and the rhythm of the project was determined by imperial finance and transport demands. ⁶

On April 20, 1908, the South-North Railway was fully completed. On October 24, the authorities held the completion ceremony in Taichung Park. This ceremony was not merely a celebration of transportation, but a public ritual for the colonial government to demonstrate that it "could govern the entire island." The authorities invited royal family members, officials, and figures from various sectors, packaging the full opening of the railway as proof that Taiwan had entered a new era. ^{2 4}

📝 Curator’s Note: The official ceremony leaves behind an image of completion, but what remains in the mountains is the time of construction, earthquakes, and repairs; if one only looks at the opening day, the longest waits within the project are cut out.

How a Line Changed Distance

Before the South-North Railway, movement between north and south Taiwan was constrained by roads, rivers, and seasons. After the railway’s completion, travel from north to south took approximately 14 hours. This speed redefined "island travel" at the time, making the train the primary tool for cross-regional movement. ⁷

What changed was not just the passengers. The railway transported rice, sugar, timber, and minerals from the interior to the ports, connecting them to the Japanese Empire’s shipping network. English-language research compiling statistics from the Taiwan Governor-General’s Office indicates that the station locations and route configurations of the South-North Line primarily served the export demand for moving agricultural products to ports. ⁶

This design also explains why the railway quickly connected with branch lines for the sugar, forestry, and mining industries. On 1930s national archive maps, outside the state-owned trunk lines, there were also privately operated commercial lines, enterprise-specific lines, and light tracks powered by human or animal labor. The density of the railway network reflected not merely tourist bustle, but how industries were connected to transport nodes. ⁸

Three Time Points: Seeing How the Railway Became a Network

What is most easily overlooked in this table is the year 1922. The South-North Line did not stop growing after its 1908 opening. The Coast Line provided an alternative route to the Mountain Line, transforming the railway from a single north-south trunk into a network capable of分流 (diverting flow), connecting production areas, and connecting ports. ²

Notably, in the 1930s, railways served not only long-distance travelers. The Wanxin Line, running from Wanhua to Xindian, was only 10.4 kilometers long, yet in 1930 it transported over 3.64 million passengers. This number brought the "railway" back from a state project to a transportation tool that urban residents rode daily. ²

Figure: Route map published by the Taiwan Railways Administration in 1950; Public domain, provided via Wikimedia Commons.

This 1950 route map laid another turning point bare on paper: the South-North Line was no longer just the engineering achievement of the colonial government, but was reorganized by the post-war Taiwan Railways Administration into a spatial imagination of public transport. The map did not eliminate the damage left by war, nor did it explain how much benefit each locality received. It simply drew out "which places were connected." ⁹

However, export-orientation did not mean localities received no benefits. Economic history research from LSE, comparing statistics from 1905 to 1918 between cities with and without railway access, found that cities connected to the railway saw an average increase in irrigation land income of approximately 60,000 yen. The railway lowered transport costs and expanded markets, giving some farmers greater incentive to invest in irrigation and improved crops. ⁶

The research simultaneously warns that benefits were not evenly distributed. In cities with rising population density, irrigation land income might actually decline. Land competition and urbanization redistributed the benefits brought by the railway. The South-North Line was therefore not a line where "everyone benefited," but a line that accelerated the amplification of disparities. ⁶

Figure: Sheng Hsing Station; Nils Öberg, CC BY-SA 3.0, provided via Wikimedia Commons.

The Mountain Line Is Not Background, but the Railway Itself

During the 1935 Hsinchu–Taichung earthquake, the tracks of the South-North Mountain Line twisted, tunnel walls cracked, stations and bridges collapsed, and trains were halted for three years. This disaster revealed that the railway was not a straight line drawn on a map, but an engineering project that aged alongside earthquakes, gradients, and rock layers. ⁵

The ruins left by Sheng Hsing Station and the Yutengping (Longteng) Bridge reveal how the South-North Line traversed the mountains, and how natural disasters rewrote a trunk line. They are not antiquities detached from transportation history, but concrete traces of the costs paid by railway engineering. ⁵

These ruins also changed the railway’s use. Sections originally used to transport coal, timber, and fruit, after ceasing operations, became historical displays and tourist routes. The same set of tunnels and bridges transformed from transport infrastructure into containers of local memory. ⁵

The difficulty of preserving railway heritage lies in making people see how engineering worked, rather than turning it merely into a nostalgic landscape. Preserving tracks, bridge piers, and stations is also preserving a technical language that once dominated movement. ⁵ This is why the South-North Line remains worth re-reading.

It leaves not a single answer, but a path for repeated questioning.

Beyond Stations: Railways Also Created Lifestyles

After the South-North Line opened, the Railway Department began operating more than just trains. It introduced discounted tickets, joint transport to seawater beaches, and travel activities, connecting trains to hotels, restaurants, buses, and tourist itineraries. In the 1930s, the railway began selling the imagination of an "island loop," even though a truly complete island-loop railway did not yet exist. ⁸

A 1933 case in national archives illustrates this well: students from Taichung Normal School first took a train to Yilan, then traveled via Su’ao, Taroko, Hualien, Taitung, and the south, piecing together an island loop using cars, walking, and railways. It was not until the South-Central Railway opened in 1991 that the public could truly loop the island entirely by rail. ⁸

Railways also brought class disparities. Exhibition materials from the National Taiwan History Museum indicate that during the Japanese era, train tickets were not cheap for most Taiwanese; first-class passengers were mainly foreigners and the upper class of Taiwanese and Japanese. Ordinary people more often took trains for festivals, seawater beaches, or short trips. ⁷

Thus, while trains shortened the island’s distance, they simultaneously made "who could move, and in what manner" a new social disparity. Modern transportation never only had speed; it also included ticket prices, station locations, and who was placed alongside the route.

War, Repair, and a Second Life for a Line

In the late stages of World War II, Taiwan’s railways were bombed, damaging bridges, culverts, and tracks. After Japan left Taiwan, the railway system was left in a barely operational state. After 1949, new personnel, materials, and US aid equipment gradually entered, and the railway only then re-emerged as the main mode of transport in post-war Taiwan. ^{3 10}

The Taichung Locomotive Works offers another perspective. It maintained steam locomotives during the Japanese era, shifted to diesel-electric locomotives in the 1960s, and after railway electrification in 1979, maintained electric locomotives. The Preparatory Office of the National Railway Museum therefore views the Works’ maintenance history as a microcosm of Taiwan’s railway development history. ¹⁰

This also means that the "South-North Railway" should not stop at 1908. The life of the railway does not end with the opening ceremony, but continues in every track replacement, bridge repair, shift to electricity, relocation of the locomotive works, and in the daily lives of post-war passengers using it as a route to return home.

📝 Curator’s Note: The same line can send agricultural products to ports, and also send people working away from home back home; as transport purposes change, the tracks retain the memory of who they once served, and what they prioritized.

Two Modernizations Left on the Tracks

What is most worth remembering about the South-North Railway is not the overly simplified conclusion that "Japan built Taiwan," but asking: Who decided the route? Who paid the cost? Who gained speed? Who was left outside the station?

The answer will not be singular. The colonial government used railways to improve administrative, military, and export efficiency. The engineering integrated land, industry, and population into tighter control. The same network also lowered transport costs in some areas, reconnecting agricultural production with urban markets. These results conflict with each other, yet are simultaneously true. ^{6 8}

Today, riding the West Coast Trunk Line, the cities outside the window seem to have pushed the colonial era far away. But the tunnels of the Old Mountain Line, the Heart Lake Pavilion in Taichung Park, the ruins of the Railway Department outside North Gate, and the still-operating stations all remind us: modernization is not a destination, but layers of choices paved over old routes.

In 1908, the authorities celebrated the north-south connection with the tone of "continuous flow." For later generations, that line indeed made the island easier for people to reach each other. But it also left another question: When a line connected all places to the same market, did localities gain freedom, or only the speed to be transported away faster?

Image Sources

The three images are embedded via external hotlinks; image files were not downloaded or stored. The opening ceremony architecture and the 1950 route map are Public domain; the Sheng Hsing Station photo is CC BY-SA 3.0, requiring retention of author Nils Öberg, Wikimedia Commons, and the license link when used. ^{11 12 9}

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