The Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) is about to put tickets on sale for a steam train service powered by the CK-124 model locomotive to celebrate the Railway Festival next month.
The festival falls on June 9, a Tuesday, but the steam train service will be offered on June 7, the preceding Sunday.
Steam train devotees planning to take the train can purchase the tickets at TRA stations in Taichung, Fengyuan (豐原) and Changhua this Saturday from 8am.
Each person can only buy a maximum of four tickets.
Only 160 reserved seats will be offered, the TRA said.
Each ticket costs NT$688, with no discounts for children.
Passengers whose birthday fall on June 9 can buy one ticket and get one free.
Passengers will also receive souvenirs from the TRA — including caps, mobile phone straps with figurines of a TRA train crew and a certificate for boarding the steamer.
The train will take the mountain route that leaves from Changhua station and arrives at Fengyuan, the TRA said.
On the return trip, the train will take the coastal route that goes from Dajia (大甲) and Jhueifen (追分) to Changhua.
The CK-124 model locomotive will be attached to three train cars of the diesel-powered Kuanghwa-class Express (光華號), which was the fastest train service before the TRA routes were electrified.
Operating on a narrow-gauge railway system, the Kuanghwa Express could go up to 70kph.
During the prime of the Kuanghwa Express era, each cabin featured a female attendant to provide tea and small towels to passengers.
Passengers could also purchase newspapers, magazines and snacks on board.
The Kuanghwa Express service was halted in 1997.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift