Changhua Roundhouse ( zh, t=彰化扇形車庫, p=Zhānghuà Shànxíng Chēkù) is a

railway roundhouse A railway roundhouse is a building with a circular or semicircular shape used by railways for servicing and storing locomotives. Traditionally, though not always the case today, these buildings surrounded or were adjacent to a turntable. Overv ...

operated by the

Taiwan Railway Administration Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) is a railway operator in Taiwan. It is an agency of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, responsible for managing, maintaining, and running conventional passenger and freight railway services ...

(TRA) in

Changhua City Changhua (Hokkien POJ: ''Chiong-hòa'' or ''Chiang-hòa''), officially known as Changhua City, is a county-administered city and the county seat of Changhua County in Taiwan Province of the Republic of China. For many centuries the site was h ...

Changhua County Changhua County (Mandarin Pinyin: ''Zhānghuà Xiàn''; Wade-Giles: ''Chang¹-hua⁴ Hsien⁴''; Hokkien POJ: ''Chiang-hòa-koān'' or ''Chiong-hòa-koān'') is the smallest county on the main island of Taiwan by area, and the fourth smallest ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. The roundhouse is located directly north of

Changhua railway station Changhua () is a railway station in Changhua City, Changhua County, Taiwan served by Taiwan Railways. It is located at the southern junction of the Taichung line and Coastal line, where the line continues onto the southern section of the West C ...

. Built in 1922, it is the only surviving railway roundhouse in Taiwan.

Overview

Changhua Roundhouse is composed of twelve stalls for trains surrounding a

turntable A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

. The roundhouse is still operational and houses many historical trains on a rotating basis: as of October 2020, the roundhouse currently displays two steam locomotives: CK124, a CK120 locomotive, and DT668, a DT650 locomotive. Changhua Roundhouse is still operational and is used for maintenance of locomotives, but visitors are allowed to enter for free.

History

Changhua Roundhouse was completed in October 1922 ( Taishō 11) during Japan's rule over Taiwan, and its opening coincided with the Coastal Line section (

Zhunan Zhunan Township is an urban township in northern Miaoli County, Taiwan. Its city centre forms a continuous urban area with Toufen. Name Literally, ''Zhúnán'' () means "bamboo south" but in this context, ''zhú'' is short for "Hsinchu". Th ...

to Changhua) of the West Coast Line. Originally, the building had six stalls; this was increased to eight stalls in 1923, ten stalls in 1924, and twelve stalls in 1933. Allied forces bombed the roundhouse during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, causing damage to stalls 5 and 6. With the introduction of the R20 diesel locomotive in 1970, stalls 1 to 7 were fitted with platforms for their maintenance. Then, when the E100 electric locomotive arrived in 1980, stalls 1 and 2 were also fitted to support maintenance for electric trains. Originally, Taiwan had five other railway roundhouses, but all of the other ones were demolished. In 1994, Changhua Roundhouse was also planned to be demolished to build a larger depot, but due to local pushback, the plan was never carried out. The depot was built south of Changhua railway station instead. On 25 October 2000, Changhua Roundhouse was protected as a county-designated monument. The rationale highlighted the building's "unique architecture" and "significance in Taiwanese railway history". In 2015, the Changhua County Government proposed elevating the train tracks running through Changhua City, which would cut off the Roundhouse from the rest of the railway network.

References

External links

* {{commons inline * Changhua Roundhouse a
National Cultural Heritage Database
Buildings and structures completed in 1922 Changhua City Historic sites in Taiwan Railway roundhouses Tourist attractions in Changhua County 1922 establishments in Taiwan