National Taiwan Railway Museum | 國立臺灣博物館鐵道部

This is a continuation from our previous blog post. Click here to check out my entire Beimen Day Trip! 

After making my way through a ton of historic parts of Beimen, my last stop was the National Taiwan Railway Museum 國立臺灣博物館鐵道部. The museum itself consists of several buildings: the main building (the administration headquarters), the Octagon, the Canteen, the wartime bomb shelter, as well as the Electricity Building, construction buildings, among others.

The exterior of the main building (pictured above) was carefully restored to its former appearance during Taiwan's Japanese colonial era. With its arch-shaped exterior, European-style columns, green window tills, and red bricks, the building does make for a striking appearance. Both the interior and exterior parts of the building were inspired by English Baroque style architecture. 

There was a lot to explore in the museum...and not enough time, honestly. Since it was COVID times, everyone was only allowed to be in the vicinity for 1 and a half hour only. There were a ton of different exhibitions in the museum. One of the exhibitions explained the history of the railway system in Taiwan, while another was filled with photos and scale models of former railway stations that have since been renovated, and no longer look the way the used to look during the Japanese colonial era. Case in point: the Keelung Train Station. 

Other than railway stations, there were also model trains that were on display, those were super cute! 

In the museum itself, there were two built-in train interiors, so that you could pretend that you were taking a trip to somewhere really exciting! One of the was the extremely popular vintage "blue-trains" 藍皮火車. The "blue-trains" was a diesel train which was retired in December 2020, after the Taiwan railway systems became fully electrified.  

Other than that. there were old train tickets, and even an old vault depicting all sorts of old train documents that have been saved! 

It's also a great place for kids as there are a ton of interactive exhibitions that the kids could play with (but some were closed due to COVID restrictions). I saw a bunch of kids with there toy cameras, excitedly running around and taking photos. 

Oh and there was this really grand train diorama depicting the area around the Taipei Main Station in the '80s. It was really well made. The lights would turn on and off, depicting morning to night and we could see actual toy model trains that were moving around and making there way around the whole place! It was so cool to see! This show was available only once or twice every hour.  

Other than that, the interior of the railway museum, was really elaborate. With gorgeous chandeliers and even curtains, it kind of made me feel like I was overseas. 

We then explored some of the other buildings, though some of them weren't open to the public just yet (such as the wartime bomb shelter). 

I would still highly recommend making a visit to the museum, just to see its gorgeous architecture and to learn more about Taiwanese trains. 

To Visit: You can exit from Taipei Main Station's Underground mall via Exit Y26. Walk for just a few minutes and you're there!

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