Qualla: Old Caoling Tunnel

Old Caoling Tunnel: Introduction

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Encino, CC BY-SA 3.0. For sixty years, trains threaded through this hillside and no one thought to look closely at the rock. The Old Caoling Tunnel carried freight and passengers along the Yilan Line beginning in February 1924, bored through the coastal ridge that separates Gongliao from the Yilan plain. When a new tunnel opened alongside it in 1986, the old bore went dark — abandoned rather than demolished, sealed rather than erased. What followed was a slow transformation nobody planned in a hurry: decades of quiet, then a decision, then a reopening on 10 August 2009 as something the original engineers never imagined. Today cyclists enter where locomotives once did, and the mountain keeps its secret about which era it preferred.

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Image: Encino | CC BY-SA 3.0

Old Caoling Tunnel: Built for Coal and Speed

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jui-Nan Lin, CC BY-SA 2.0. The tunnel was completed in 1924 as a single-track bore on the Yilan Line — the coastal railway that knit Taiwan's northeast together during the Japanese colonial period. Cutting through the ridge at Caoling, it allowed trains to bypass the headland where the coast becomes impass...

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Image: Jui-Nan Lin | CC BY-SA 2.0

Old Caoling Tunnel: The Long Quiet

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Outlookxp, CC BY-SA 3.0. Abandoned infrastructure in Taiwan does not always disappear. The Old Caoling Tunnel sat dormant through the late 1980s and 1990s while the northeast coast developed as a scenic area. The Northeast Coast and Yilan National Scenic Area Administration eventually recognized what lay...

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Image: Outlookxp | CC BY-SA 3.0

Old Caoling Tunnel: Two Kilometers of Immersion

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Outlookxp, CC BY-SA 3.0. Walking or cycling through 2.167 kilometers of tunnel is not a passive experience. The portals at each end frame daylight like painting borders; in between, the rock presses close and the air holds a different temperature than the hillside outside. The replica lanterns cast warm ...

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Image: Outlookxp | CC BY-SA 3.0

Old Caoling Tunnel: Northeast Coast, Seen From Both Ends

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit KasugaHuang, CC BY 2.5. The tunnel's geography is part of its meaning. It pierces the ridge that forms the spine of Taiwan's northeast corner, where volcanic hills drop sharply to a rocky coast lashed by the Pacific. On the Gongliao side, the land opens toward fishing communities and surf beaches. On th...

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Image: KasugaHuang | CC BY 2.5

Old Caoling Tunnel: A Tunnel That Outlived Its First Life

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit WeiHsiang Wang, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most infrastructure that goes dark in the twentieth century stays dark. The Old Caoling Tunnel is a reminder that the reverse is possible — that a bore through a hillside can outlast its original purpose and find another. The railway that built it is gone from this stretch; the l...

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Image: WeiHsiang Wang | CC BY-SA 3.0