The Alishan Express is getting a makeover, with its four cars decorated in Ikawa Line livery to mark the 40th anniversary of the partnership between the Alishan Forest Railway and Japan’s Oigawa Railway, the Alishan Forest Railway and Cultural Heritage Office said on Friday.
The Oigawa Railway became the railway’s first international sister railway when then-Forestry Bureau director-general Hsu Chi-yu (許啟祐) and former Oigawa Railway Co president Taizo Goto signed the agreement in Chiayi County on Jan. 24, 1986.
Both railways are renowned for spectacular mountain scenery, century-old history and cultural heritage, the office said.
Photo courtesy of the Alishan Forest Railway and Cultural Heritage Office via CNA
The international friendship deepened over the following decades, with both sides continuing exchanges in train maintenance, railway operations, tourism promotion and cultural legacy preservation, it said.
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the friendship, the four cars of the Alishan Express would be colored red in the livery of Japanese trains running on the Ikawa Line of the Oigawa Railway, the office said.
The repainted Alishan Express train begins running on Friday and runs between Chiayi and Alishan stations, it said.
Photo courtesy of the Alishan Forest Railway and Cultural Heritage Office via CNA
Passengers boarding the train can travel through Alishan’s misty highland forest, which is expected to evoke an air of the Oigawa Railway charm, it added.
Trains running on the Oigawa Railway in Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture feature Showa vintage passenger cars pulled by a steam locomotive, as well as wooden seats, vintage ceiling fans and onboard novelty items, which would all be recreated for passengers on the Alishan Express, the office said, adding that various excursion packages such as a dinner trip, a nighttime voyage, or a booze cruise would also be offered.
Office director Wang Chao-pao (王昭堡) said this is the first time that the railway’s trains would imitate the livery of a foreign train, honoring the 40-year friendship between the railways.
The railway would continue to engage in technical and cultural exchanges with the Oigawa
Railway and jointly promote railway tourism, he said.
The railway is Taiwan’s first national cultural landscape area.
It connects 20 train stations that are characterized by their natural, ecological, industrial or cultural significance, extending for more than 70km from the
Chiayi Station at an altitude of 30m to Jhushan Station (祝山) at an altitude of 2,451m.
It was listed as one of the world’s 200 most significant railway journeys in Epic Train Trips of the World published by Lonely Planet last year.
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