Switchbacks into the clouds

The Alishan Forest Railway was built to carry timber from the mountain forests. The Chiayi–Erwanping section opened in December 1912. The line continued uphill, and the main route reached Zhaoping (then Alishan Station) in 1914. Timber, workers and supplies travelled along the railway as logging expanded.

The line runs for 71.6 kilometres on a gauge of just 762 millimetres. To gain height in a short distance it uses spirals, where the track loops over itself, and switchbacks, where the train reverses direction to continue climbing. There are more than fifty tunnels and seventy-seven wooden bridges, and the gradient reaches 6.26 percent. The vegetation changes from tropical lowland to temperate cypress forest and finally to alpine scrub. The journey from Chiayi to Alishan takes about four hours, and the temperature can drop by fifteen degrees along the way.

Typhoons and landslides have repeatedly closed the line. The main line was partly shut after Typhoon Morakot in 2009, reopened to Fenqihu in 2014 and to Shizilu in 2017, and finally restored all the way to Alishan in July 2024 after a new tunnel was completed. At the top, short branch lines run to Shenmu and Zhaoping, and an early morning train climbs to Chushan for sunrise over the Yushan range. The railway is listed by the Ministry of Culture as a potential World Heritage site, and it remains one of the few places where a logging railway still works as a passenger line.