**1. Introduction**

The Taipei Railway Workshop was a special plant for train maintenance and modification of Taiwan Railways. The Taipei Railway Workshop shows more than 100 years of Taiwan's history from 1885 to 2011, including the Qing-Ruled Period (1683–1895), the Japanese-Ruled Period (1895–1945), World War II, and the retreat of the government from the Republic of China to Taiwan (1949–now). It has status as both industrial site and cultural heritage, and is of great cultural significance to Taiwan's architecture, science, technology, historical development, labor culture, transportation, and industrial value [1,2].

The Taipei Railway Workshop is the former "Taipei Machinery Bureau", as established in 1885. In the late 19th century, Taiwan was governed by the emperors of the Qing Dynasty, and the Taipei Machinery Bureau was established under the background of the Westernization Movement to be responsible for the production of weapons and military facilities. In 1895, meaning the early Japanese-Ruled Period, the emperor of the Qing Dynasty ceded Taiwan to Japan, and the Taipei Machinery Bureau established during the Qing Dynasty was taken over by the Japanese army and changed to the "Taipei Artillery Factory", a place for weapon maintenance of the Japanese army. In 1899, with Taiwan's West Coast line railway construction plan, the General Governor of Taiwan requested that Japan's Army Ministry transfer the assets of the Taipei Artillery Factory to the Railway Department of the General Governor to become a maintenance plant for the Railway Department; therefore, the Railway Department of the General Governor of Taiwan established the "Taipei Railway Workshop" in 1900. In 1935, to respond to the growing demands for railway development in Taiwan, the Taipei Railway Workshop was relocated to its present site in Xinyi District, and became the first modern railway maintenance plant in Taiwan. From 1950 to 1970, assisted by the United States, the diesel-electric locomotive shop was newly built in the Taipei Railway Workshop to upgrade train power from steam and diesel engines to electrified power. Until 2012, when Taiwan Railways moved the maintenance base to Fugang (Taoyuan, Taiwan), the Taipei Railway Workshop was faced with the crisis of removal and resale due to the financial problems of the Railway Authority. Finally, it was preserved by the great efforts of cultural heritage groups and railway fans, and designated as a national historical site; moreover, the Ministry of Culture established the Preparatory Committee of the National Railway Museum in 2019 to carry out the core business of cultural relic collection, maintenance, research, and exhibition [1–3].

The Taipei Railway Workshop covers a total area of 193,912 m2, including a forging workshop (forging and metallurgy shop), engine room, erecting workshop, diesel-electric locomotive shop, coach workshop, and sheet metal workshop, and is equipped with staff dormitories, employee bathhouse, and other welfare facilities for workers. The plant plan and the aerial view are shown in Figures 1 and 2, respectively [3].

**Figure 1.** Plan of Taipei Railway Workshop [3].

**Figure 2.** View of Taipei Railway Workshop in 1930s [4].

As the Taipei Railway Workshop covers a large area, and has a large number of objects, currently, led by the Ministry of Culture, it is divided into various sections for restoration and to build an in situ museum. The purposes of this study are object research and exhibition planning of the forging workshop. Built in 1935, the forging workshop is the working field for forging and manufacturing, steel heating treatments, spring repair testing, and vehicles maintenance, thus, this area has the oldest mechanical equipment in the Taipei Railway Workshop. Figure 3 shows the working conditions of the forging workshop in the 1950s, and Figure 4 shows the present situations of the three areas of the Taipei Railway Workshop. The purposes of this study are object research and exhibition planning for the forging workshop of the National Railway Museum. Taking the forging workshop as an exhibition space, this study explains the historical background, train technology, and technology development in Taiwan driven by track vehicles.

**Figure 3.** Operations of the forging shop in 1950s [2].

The working area in the forging workshop can be divided into two areas, namely shaping and forging areas. For the former, spring was the main product of the shaping area. It is made of an elastic material and used to relieve shock or vibration, store energy, or measure the amount of force in mechanical devices. Since the middle of the 17th century, the leaf spring has been used on the carriage as a part of suspension [6]. To the 19th century, the leaf springs are also applied on the suspension of the trains, and it was replaced gradually by the helical spring.

**Figure 4.** Present situations of the plant [5]. (**a**) Sheet metal workshop, (**b**) erecting workshop, (**c**) forging workshop.

For the other area in the shop, forging is a manufacturing process in which a metal hammer is used to strike a metal workpiece to generate local compressive force to form the metal. This manufacturing technique can be traced back to thousands of years ago, and the power source of the forging devices had developed from manpower, weight [7], water [8,9], compressed air [9], to the steam and electric power.

This study conducts object inventory, organization, filing, and basic study, and interviews the workers who had been in the forging workshop. By summarizing the study results of object research and worker interviews, the complete information of file data tables of the archaeological survey is deduced and integrated, in order to convert the complex scientific knowledge into language easily understood by viewers. Meanwhile, preservation and maintenance methods are suggested, and the plans for exhibition planning, exhibition outline, promotion, and education activities are proposed [1–5].

## **2. Materials and Methods**

With the technological evolution, aeronautical facilities, navigation equipment, and boiler units have appeared in large numbers, and due to their scientific, historical, cultural value and condition, many of them have become important cultural heritage items in museum collections. However, the preservation and maintenance of such large objects have become an urgent problem faced by museums. Many international principles and specifications have been developed for the preservation and maintenance of cultural heritage items, thus, there are many records of industrial site restoration and in situ museum planning [2,9–12].

As a part of the railway museum restoration program of the Ministry of Culture, this study organizes the cultural relics and relevant historical data of the forging workshop. Most of the cultural relics in the plant are machines, including the British 941 steam hammer, which was purchased during the Qing Dynasty in 1889 and is the most representative. In addition to sorting out the historical data of the industrial machine relics one by one, the correlation between machines, operation technology, and suggestions for cultural relic conservation are the main items of this program. Industrial machine relics equipped with electric systems can also be found, such as the machines purchased from Morita Iron Works in 1974, which are related to helical spring production. Although various industrial machine relics were purchased in different years, the display fields are set to match with them according to their functions and the processing requirements. The applications of the machines are also changed to adapt to the newly purchased machines; therefore, in addition to the considerations of the history of the cultural relics, the overall area history is another focus of this study. As shown in Figure 5, this study procedure mainly consists of four items, including site exploration, object selection, numbering and registration, object research, and exhibition planning.

**Figure 5.** Study procedure.

#### A. Site exploration

The members of the research team included museum researchers, cultural relic restorers, historians, and mechanics. In the first step, the people in this program conducted site explorations of the forging workshop together with the staff of the Taipei Railway Workshop (present Preparatory Office of Railway Museum) and the workers who had maintained the trains in the forging workshop, in order to confirm the current preservation situations of buildings, machines, and peripheral objects on this site.

This research team and the abovementioned staff performed the site exploration on 8 August, 2019. The workers of the forging workshop provided explanations of the site, including the parts they used to produce here, the machine operation modes, and the production processes, as well as the staff's dining and rest experiences, in order to establish the research team's basic understanding of the industrial site.

#### B. Object selection, numbering, and registration

According to the basic understanding, as established in the previous step, this research team selected the objects in the forging workshop. Some on-site items were moved after the relocation of Taiwan Railways, and many fixtures and hand tools were scattered, thus, the research team focused on the manufacturing process of the mechanical components used for train maintenance, in order to select the objects, including machines in the plant, auxiliary tools, and the vehicles used to transport work pieces between machines. The object data, such as names, storage locations, external dimensions, and feature descriptions were listed for important objects, together with the numbers marked in the previous step and photos of the present situations. Furthermore, documents were created for all objects to record the detailed data of the objects, such as the units' location information, the industrial site's nature and cultural significance, investigation numbers, machine or tool labels, manufacture dates, nameplates and marks, constituents and materials, and present situation descriptions.
