Kaohsiung

At the hotel, the housekeeping arranged our water bottles to be in a row! How kind, Cityinn.

Look familiar?

Yes. This thing, is indeed made out of tickets.

What kind of a place needs a "no fire" sign in front of cardboard? Are people really that stupid?

This is the inside of Xinzuoying MRT station.

Aside from Taipei's MRT, the Kaohsiung MRT is one of the cleanest I know of.

They use the same stock as the Taipei MRT, except they are painted differently. I wasn't able to get any better shots. :(

Well, the sign told me to take a picture, so...

Our first stop in Kaohsiung was the Takao Railway Museum/Kaohsiungkang Railway Cultural Park.

Once you leave the museum and the comfort of the AC (this is the hottest part of Taiwan!), you are greeted by DT609, a steam locomotive.

This is an old switcher in the collection. I didn't take any pictures of the placards, and nothing is online, so it will remain a mystery forever.

This is second-class passenger car 35SP32426.

This is CT259, a CT250 class steam locomotive.

This is baggage-generator car 35SP32426.

This is a Schoma switcher that, interestingly enough, was actually articulated.

Which means that it is connected to a second section. This format is also known as "cow and calf."

This is an upside-down house. No, I don't know why there is an upside-down house.

HOW?!

There was also an old CK58 on display there, too.

The Kaohsiung Hamasen is a railway museum...that rips off Harry Potter. Points for trying, though!

The Kaohsiung Hamasen is also home to a small miniature railway.

This is the entire train ride.

We got to ride on this little train, a model of the Kaohsiung Light Rail Transit, which we got to ride.

The day we went there was July 2. Unauspicious, right? Wrong. July 3 was when the Kaohsiung Hamasen actually opened its model railway museum along with the train ride, but they still charged us full admission for both the train ride and the museum entry. Yet they still didn't allow us in. Way to go!

This is the former British Consulate.

This was the hotel that we stayed in five years ago...

Just kidding, this is the back of the hotel. The front is still relatively intact.

After that we went along to the new Light Rail Transit. The LRT uses grassed track and some very interesting battery charging technologies.

Another nice feature is the gigantic windows that show the driver's cab.

This is another one of the LRT sets at a different station. They were manufactured by CAF, a Spanish company.

This is the set that we rode, one of three. This picture shows it at the terminus at Kaohsiung Exhibition Center.

This light rail uses quick-charge technology, meaning that it mainly operates off of a battery, but at stations raises the pantograph up to charge the battery.

These are videos that I compiled of our trips on both the subway and the light rail.

After the LRT ride, we headed over to Xiaogang Airport to watch some planes in the AC. This is a ATR 72-600 taxiing into the Domestic terminal.

This is a Dragonair Airbus A320 being pushbacked into the runway.

This is a Tigerair A320 taking off on the runway.

Away it goes...

This is a Vanilla Air Airbus A320-200 taking off, heading for points unknown.

And this is a Daily Air Dornier Do 228 landing at Siaogang Airport.  

This is a China Airlines plane taking off. At that height, God knows what type of plane that is!

Shouldn't that be "FEAT?"

Because that isn't very complimentary towards their flight attendants.

On the THSR, I shot this video of the passing countryside.

This is our EMU500 coming in to Xinwuri Station

.

Next post will be about the Changhua Fan-Shaped Roundhouse and the Xihu Tangtie.