The Twilight Years of Taiwan’s Sugar Railways

In their heyday, Taiwan’s sugar railways were the world’s most extraordinary narrow gauge industrial railway system. Its tracks criss-crossed southern and central Taiwan and the track length of 3,000 kilometres exceeded the national railway’s network. With sugar being Taiwan’s largest export, by bringing sugar cane from the field to the mills and then sugar products to the ports, the sugar railways played a critical role in Taiwan’s economic miracle. The railways were not limited to transporting sugar and instead carried a very diverse range of freight. It also had a passenger network of 600 kilometres that included limited stop express trains. In our book we focus on the twilight years of Taiwan’s sugar railways in the 1990s when the still extensive system was entering a period of rapid closures. We tell the story of Taiwan’s sugar railways using a collection of previously unpublished photographs. We also try to show the human side of this remarkable story by bringing in insights from extensive interviews with retired sugar railway workers.