History
The first rail station in Taipei was completed in Dadaocheng in 1891, when the railway to Keelung was opened for service. Initially, a temporary station was built while a permanent station was constructed in 1897. In 1901, the station was located to the east of its current location. It was rebuilt in 1940 to accommodate growing passenger traffic.
To alleviate traffic congestion caused by railroad crossings in downtown Taipei, an underground railway tunnel between Huashan and Wanhua was built along with the present station building as part of the Taipei Railway Underground Project. When the underground system was completed on September 2, 1989, railway service was moved to the newly-completed building (completed on September 5, 1989) and the old building as well as a temporary station were demolished.
The current station was further expanded with the opening of the Taipei Metro. The metro station is connected to the basement of the railway station and opened to passenger traffic in 1997 to the Danshui Line (now the Tamsui Line). Extensive underground malls now exist at the front and back of the station, which emulate those found in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan. The station also became a terminus for Taiwan High Speed Rail trains when the network began service in 2007.
Read more about this topic: Taipei Railway Station
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“A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)