Spectral Codex
亞泥空中纜車

Asia Cement Aerial Tramway

Locations
Climbing a cable car tower in Hsinchu County
Date Captured
Camera
NIKON D3100
Lens
AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II
Aperture
ƒ / 10
Shutter Speed
1/400 sec
Focal Length
31.0 mm
ISO
400
Exposure Value
15.3 EV
Download
1800 × 1200
Climbing a derelict tramway tower in Hsinchu County.

Back in 2015 I went out with a friend to explore several abandoned and neglected sites in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Our first stop was one of many mothballed cable car (空中纜車) towers in Hengshan connecting a stone quarry near Yùshān Village (玉山里) in Guanxi formerly known as Chìkēshān (赤柯山), with a cement plant next to Jiǔzàntóu Station (九讚頭車站). There seems to be no general agreement about the formal name for the system so I’m picking one of many options and dubbing this the Asia Cement Aerial Tramway (亞泥空中纜車) for the sake of simplicity.

Date Captured
Camera
NIKON D3100
Lens
AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II
Aperture
ƒ / 14
Shutter Speed
1/800 sec
Focal Length
20.0 mm
ISO
400
Exposure Value
17.3 EV
Download
1800 × 1200
Clarence climbs the tramway tower.
A tramway tower in Hsinchu County
Date Captured
Camera
NIKON D3100
Lens
AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II
Aperture
ƒ / 11
Shutter Speed
1/500 sec
Focal Length
20.0 mm
ISO
400
Exposure Value
15.9 EV
Download
1800 × 1200
Heading up the tramway tower.
Date Captured
Camera
NIKON D3100
Lens
AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II
Aperture
ƒ / 13
Shutter Speed
1/640 sec
Focal Length
19.0 mm
ISO
400
Exposure Value
16.7 EV
Download
1800 × 1200
A loose grip on the way up.
Tramway tower from below
Date Captured
Camera
NIKON D3100
Lens
AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II
Aperture
ƒ / 14
Shutter Speed
1/800 sec
Focal Length
18.0 mm
ISO
400
Exposure Value
17.3 EV
Download
1800 × 1200
All the way to the top.

Jiuzantou Station is on the Nèiwān Line (內灣線), which was originally built in the 1940s and expanded in the 1950s to support the growth of the cement and forestry industries in the area, both of which have fallen into steep decline in recent decades. Much like the historic Píngxī Line (平溪線) in New Taipei, the Neiwan Line has recently seen renewed interest and growing passenger numbers in support of tourism in the region.

Scaling a tramway tower in Hsinchu
Date Captured
Camera
NIKON D3100
Lens
AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II
Aperture
ƒ / 16
Shutter Speed
1/1000 sec
Focal Length
19.0 mm
ISO
400
Exposure Value
18.0 EV
Download
1800 × 1200
On the final approach.
Top of the tramway tower
Date Captured
Camera
NIKON D3100
Lens
AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II
Aperture
ƒ / 13
Shutter Speed
1/640 sec
Focal Length
18.0 mm
ISO
400
Exposure Value
16.7 EV
Download
1800 × 1200
The ladder narrows.

The same cannot be said for the cable car system, which runs approximately 9.5 kilometers over the rolling hills of rural Hsinchu. From the looks of it the system is still in good shape despite shutting down about a decade ago (although the buckets are still visible in 2009 even if the tramway isn’t moving). This long period of inactivity would suggest that there are more abandoned facilities to be explored along the tramway route, with particular emphasis on the stone quarries at one end and the cement factories at the other1, but that’ll have to wait for another day.

Aerial tramway line in rural Hsinchu
Date Captured
Camera
NIKON D3100
Lens
AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II
Aperture
ƒ / 10
Shutter Speed
1/400 sec
Focal Length
55.0 mm
ISO
400
Exposure Value
15.3 EV
Download
1800 × 1200
An abandoned aerial tramway line running through the mountains of Hsinchu County.

As of the earlier 2020s this particular cable car tower had been dismantled. Many other towers on the line also seem to have met their fate.

Footnotes

  1. The Jiuzantou cement plant is still operated by the Asia Cement Corporation (亞洲水泥股份有限公司) but the stone quarry also provided material for a Taiwan Cement (台灣水泥) plant in Zhudong that is no longer in business. ↩

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Author

Profile photo of Alexander Synaptic, founder of Spectral Codex
Alexander Synaptic
Curator, Spectral Codex

I am a web application developer, photojournalist, urban explorer, and history enthusiast passionate about the open web and documenting my experiences on this planet. This project was founded in the early 2010s and has evolved into a sort of personal Wikipedia of places that interest me (and often the photographs I’ve taken there). I’m originally from Toronto, Canada, but spend most of my time residing in Taiwan.

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