Western Trunk line () is a railway line of the Taiwan Railways Administration in western Taiwan. It is by far the busiest line, having served over 171 million passengers in 2016. The total length of the line is 404.5 km. The line is an official classification of physical tracks and does not correspond to particular services. It is connected to

Taichung line The Taichung line (), also known as the Mountain line (), is a line of the Taiwan Railway Administration, which one of two parallel lines in Central Taiwan section offsetting to inland mountain area. It has a total length of 85.5 km, all of w ...

(''mountain line''; ) at

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 ...

and

Changhua 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 ...

. Many services turn inland to take the Taichung route, then reconnect back to the main line (West Coast line). Train schedules and departure boards mark either ''mountain'' or ''coastal'' () line to indicate the route taken.

History

The original railroad between

Keelung Keelung () or Jilong () (; Hokkien POJ: '), officially known as Keelung City, is a major port city situated in the northeastern part of Taiwan. The city is a part of the Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area, along with its neighbors, New Taipe ...

and Twatutia was completed in 1891. The section between Twatutia and Hsinchu was finished in 1893. However, in the

Japanese era The , also known as , is the first of the two elements that identify years in the Japanese era calendar scheme. The second element is a number which indicates the year number within the era (with the first year being ""), followed by the literal ...

, these sections were all rebuilt by the

Government-General of Taiwan The Government-General of Taiwan (Japanese: , Kyūjitai: , Hepburn: ''Taiwan Sōtoku-fu''; ; Tâi-lô: Tâi-uân Tsóng-tok-hú; Pha̍k-fa-sṳ=Thòi-vân Chúng-tuk-fú) was the government that governed Taiwan under Japanese rule between 189 ...

as part of its Taiwan Trunk Railway (, ''Jūkan Tetsudō'') project. The Taiwan Trunk Railway was completed in 1908 with route from Kīrun (,

) through Taihoku (, Taipei), Shinchiku (, Hsinchu), Taichū (, Taichung), Tainan (, Tainan), to Takao (,

Kaohsiung Kaohsiung City (Mandarin Chinese: ; Wade–Giles: ''Kao¹-hsiung²;'' Pinyin: ''Gāoxióng'') is a special municipality located in southern Taiwan. It ranges from the coastal urban center to the rural Yushan Range with an area of . Kaohsi ...

). The Taiwan Trunk Railway at that time went through all major cities in western Taiwan. However, the terrain around Taichū ( Taichung) created a significant bottleneck for rail freight transport. To resolve this issue, the

decided to build a Coastal Line (, ''Kaigan-sen'') between Chikunan (,

) and Shōka (,

) to relieve the congestion. The construction of the Coastal Line was started in 1919 and completed in 1922. The Coastal Line then became a part of the main West Coast Line, and the original railway through Taichū ( Taichung) was named as a separate line (

). Due to service patterns, the following lines are often collectively referred to as the ''Western main line'' ()

Stations

Notes

References

{{TRA Western Line 1891 establishments in Taiwan TRA routes Railway lines opened in 1891 3 ft 6 in gauge railways in Taiwan