Archiving the Railway Age:

Located near the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in Taipei’s Xinyi District, the National Railway Museum is a reincarnation of the Taipei Railway Workshop, which was established in 1935 during the Japanese colonial era for the maintenance of railway vehicles. The workshop closed for good in 2013, its operations having been transferred to the Fugang Vehicle Depot in Taoyuan.

The 17-hectare site was designated a national monument in 2015, which ensured its survival. In the space of nine years, the 90-year-old industrial landmark has undergone a splendid transformation into a public museum. July 2025 saw the first phase of its opening.

“Even though we were many years behind other countries, we had support from both the government and the private sector,” says Cheng Min-chang, director of the museum’s preparatory office. “We can say that setting up the museum was a bottom-up process, which made the government more willing to exhibit and manage the historic site in a more meaningful way.”

A bottom-up cultural movement

As railways concerned technology as well as issues such as transportation and logistics, related information was treated as top secret during World War II and the subsequent decades of martial law.

Nevertheless, for enthusiasts who can’t get enough of stories about trains, rail transport has always been an inexhaustible source of pleasure and enjoyment. Cheng’s college years coincided with the lifting of martial law in 1987 and the Wild Lily student movement in 1990. It was an era when long-suppressed grassroots energies in Taiwan at last erupted. In that social climate, Cheng recalls, “nothing was off limits to critical inquiry.”

A founding member of Taiwan’s Railway Culture Society, Cheng is forthright: “Why should the interpretation of railways be controlled exclusively by the government and its railway authorities?” Risking being labeled as “cultural terrorists,” Cheng and his colleagues saw it as their mission to actively rescue and restore the sizable and largely intact premises of the Taipei Railway Workshop.

Later, by a twist of fate, Cheng became part of the establishment, succeeding railway culture researcher Hung Chih-wen as director of the museum’s preparatory office.

Cheng Min-chang is a veteran railfan. His bond with the National Railway Museum dates from his university days, when the site was still operating as the Taipei Railway Workshop.

Part of many people’s memories of long-distance travels, this vintage blue train has been restored and is running once again in the grounds of the National Railway Museum.

The employees’ bathhouse, the first building at the National Railway Museum to be granted heritage status, was designed by Railway Department technician Takeo Ujiki during the Japanese colonial era. Its unconventional arched roof echoes widely adopted architectural designs for railway stations at the time, while the roof trusses—fashioned from disused rails—convey a classical elegance.

Harking back to the site’s history as a railway depot, the Diesel-Electric Locomotive Shop displays parts and components undergoing maintenance, accompanied with detailed multimedia explanations.

The planning of the National Railway Museum sparked a lot of interest among railway enthusiasts, who donated many precious objects, including this Taiwan Sugar steam locomotive from collector Dai Shengtang.

Collection highlights and visions

Perhaps in the imagination of each and every railway enthusiast is an ideal museum. It might be the United Kingdom’s National Railway Museum. Located near York Railway Station, it boasts the world’s largest railway collection. The Kyoto Railway Museum, formerly the Umekoji Steam Locomotive Museum, might also beckon to one’s heart and soul. What distinguishes Taiwan’s National Railway Museum from its counterparts elsewhere?

First of all, the historical interest derived from its transformation from the Taipei Railway Workshop is enough to make Taiwanese train buffs proud of it. But the museum has much else to recommend it. The permanent exhibition here begins by paying intimate attention to railway-related music, films, photography, and literature, triggering profound emotional responses through cultural discourses that appeal to the psyche of the nation.

Stepping next into the Diesel-Electric Locomotive Shop, we are greeted by a formidable array of trains which have been restored to their former glory. Cheng describes how every minute detail had to be accurately restored, including paint markings—from colors, symbols, and numbers to typefaces and font sizes. Everything here demonstrates the marvelous attention to detail we would expect of a specialist museum.

Other highlights include a brake van (caboose) acquired from the Thai government. A small rail vehicle coupled to the end of a freight train to enable the crew to monitor the train, it was made at the Taipei Railway Workshop in 1964 and exported to Thailand in 1965. The vehicle shows the word “Taiwan”—a testament to the prestige of Taiwanese manufacturing in that age. Also on display are a set of sleeping cars made in the 1970s. Generously donated by the East Japan Railway Company, they compensate for the regrettable lack of surviving examples of the sleeping cars manufactured in Taiwan during the same period.

In addition, the National Railway Museum has collected oral histories, publishing its interviews with senior railway workers in their 80s and 90s in a volume entitled Railway Age (2024). Bound up with Taiwan’s railway culture, the lives of these people constitute a tapestry of collective historical memories that resonate with one another. The preservation of their experiences enables railway technology and culture to survive and be passed down to posterity.

Being a national institution accounts for the museum’s capacity to carry out fundamental tasks—investigation, research, collecting—with great thoroughness. The museum has also been able to spark public interest in its open call for railway-related artifacts. Its growing collection further facilitates connections and exchanges with international railway organizations.

Only a fourth of the National Railway Museum is currently open to the public, and over 70% of the site still awaits restoration. In the name of the nation, the museum continues to transform itself. Its future is worth looking forward to. 

This brake van was built at the Taipei Railway Workshop in 1965 and exported to Thailand. Repurchased for the National Railway Museum, it symbolizes the prestige of Taiwanese engineering and the transmission of technological heritage.

The permanent exhibition at the National Railway Museum begins with cultural productions that have a wider appeal, before gradually delving into technological particularities.

The restoration of this first-generation Chu-Kuang train was based on meticulous research. Sporting the company’s white-and-blue dumbbell-pattern livery, with spacious seating, large windows, and double-layered curtains, the train was the equivalent of Taiwan High Speed Rail’s business class today.