Book launch: 'The Twilight Years of Taiwan’s Sugar Railways'

The Centre of Taiwan Studies is delighted to welcome Professor Dafydd Fell and Wang Hsiang for the launch of the book, The Twilight Years of Taiwan’s Sugar Railways, chaired by Dr Michael Reilly, which explores the fascinating legacy of Taiwan’s once-thriving sugar railway system.

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. The book focuses on the twilight years of Taiwan’s sugar railways in the 1990s when the still-extensive system was entering a period of rapid closures. It tells the story of Taiwan’s sugar railways using a collection of previously unpublished photographs and shows the human side of this remarkable story by bringing in insights from extensive interviews with retired sugar railway workers.

Image credit: Dafydd Fell and Wang Hsiang