Hamasen Museum of Taiwan Railway Audio Guide

Hamasen Museum of Taiwan Railway: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Hamasen museum of Taiwan railway

   Welcome to Kaohsiung's harbor district, where a whole country's railway story has been shrunk down to the size of a few rooms. You are at the Hamasen museum of Taiwan railway, known locally as 哈瑪星台灣鐵道館. It sits inside the Pier Two Art Center, in the old Penglai warehouses that once served the port. This is a railway museum with a clever twist. Instead of rolling stock you can climb aboard, it tells the story of Taiwanese rail through detailed miniature scenery and model trains. It is run by the Kaohsiung Museum of History on behalf of the city's Bureau of Cultural Affairs. The museum opened on 30 June 2016, in warehouses that had been left empty before they were turned into a museum. Over the next few stops, we will look at where the name Hamasen comes from, what the miniature world inside actually contains, and how the museum fits into the larger railway park around it. Think of this as a trip down a very long line, folded into one warehouse.

2. 02

   Hamasen museum of Taiwan railway: A Name Born on the Tracks

   Let's begin with that word, Hamasen. It is not Chinese in origin. It is the Japanese word for beach line, pronounced ha-ma-sen. Railway history in Kaohsiung begins in 1900, which the city treats as its railway year. The first station, called Takao Station, stood roughly where the railway park's inspection sheds and signal building are today. Beyond it to the south lay a lagoon and tidal flats. As rail traffic grew, the station ran out of room, so land was reclaimed from the sea to the south. In 1905, a track more than 500 meters long was pushed out across that new land. It was called the beach line, and locals gradually turned its Japanese pronunciation into the neighborhood's name. In other words, a railway siding gave an entire district its name. The station itself kept moving south and changing names. In 1908 it was extended to the spot of the old Takao Station, and in 1920 an administrative reform renamed it Kaohsiung Station. Later, when the main station moved, the original became Kaohsiung Port Station. That is the story the museum's miniatures begin with: they start from Takao, in Hamasen, and then spread across the island.

3. 03

   Hamasen museum of Taiwan railway: A Country in Miniature

   Now to what makes this museum unusual: its scale. The models run at H O scale, which means one to 87, so a full-sized object is shrunk to roughly one eighty-seventh of its size. The exhibition is described as the largest H O diorama in Asia. The display covers more than 100 ping of floor space, a ping being a traditional Taiwanese unit of area, and it is divided into 10 exhibition zones. The routes are what bring it to life. The layout includes four major lines, among them the North-South trunk line, and eight branch lines devoted to sugar, salt, forestry and mining. Those branches are a reminder that Taiwanese railways were never only about passengers; they also carried the island's raw materials. Model trains of classic passenger and freight types run, pass each other and weave through about 200 scenes, with several train sets operating at the same time. Sound and lighting effects, in the style of a theater show, are woven into the display, so the century of Taiwanese railway development plays out as a performance rather than a static exhibit. The scale and approach were the first of their kind in Taiwan.

4. 04

   Hamasen museum of Taiwan railway: From Warehouse to Railway Park

   The museum's setting is part of its story. Planning began in 2014, when the Bureau of Cultural Affairs worked with the Kaohsiung Museum of History to turn the former Penglai warehouses B7 and B8 into a railway museum. After it opened in 2016, it kept growing. In July 2019, an exchange exhibition with the Railway Museum in Japan brought four of that museum's trains, along with photographs, models and drawings, to Kaohsiung for about a year. Outside, the story continues in the Hamasen Railway Cultural Park, which occupies the site of the old Takao Station, Kaohsiung's first station. After the passenger station moved in 1941, the site carried on as Kaohsiung Port Station for freight, until it went out of service in 2008 to make way for the city's railway undergrounding project. In 2024, the hundredth anniversary of Kaohsiung becoming a city, the tracks came back to life. A sightseeing train called the Hamasen Train began to run, and a variety of locomotives and carriages gathered from across Taiwan were put on display. The Hamasen Train itself is a repurposed pair of freight wagons, with seats designed from railway elements such as sleepers and ballast stones.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   By now you have followed one railway line from a muddy lagoon shore in 1900 to a miniature island with 200 scenes. The Hamasen museum of Taiwan railway invites you to look at the whole story at once, in a way no full-sized track could. Before you leave, try a small game. Watch how the sugar, salt, forest and mining branch lines separate from the main routes, and ask yourself what each line was built to carry. Then step outside and look along the old rails of the railway park, and imagine the first station that once stood here beside open water. The Pier Two Art Center around you holds many more stories of this harbor. Wander on, and let the neighborhood show you what else grew up around the beach line.