Taiwan Railway opened Duoliang Station in October 1992 as a stop along the South-Link Line on the island's rugged southeastern coast. The station served Duoliang Village in Taimali Township, Taitung County — a small community in a stretch of coastline where mountains crowd close to the sea and settlements are sparse. Passenger traffic never reached the levels that would justify the operational costs. On 1 October 2006, the station was closed. The roads connecting it to the platform were subsequently removed, effectively severing it from the road network. Trains continued passing through on the active line below, but they no longer stopped.

Word spread through Taiwan's photography communities and travel forums: the empty platform above the tracks offered a vantage point unlike anything else on the island. To the east, the Pacific stretched away to the horizon. To the north and south, the coastline curved in a series of headlands, the mountains falling directly into the sea in the way that defines the East Rift Valley's meeting with the ocean. Trains running the South-Link Line still swept through the frame below the platform. Travelers began making the journey specifically to stand there — on what had been a functional railway platform — and watch the sea and the trains together. The station found an audience it had never had while it was open.

The station's popularity created new challenges. Visitors accessing the site informally, without proper paths, created safety hazards near the active rail line. On 31 March 2019, the station was temporarily closed again for upgrading works. Local government expanded the observation deck above the tracks, formalizing what visitors had been doing informally for years. On 1 July 2019, the station reopened to visitors after the upgrade works completed. On 1 February 2021, a small entrance fee was introduced — officially described as a cleaning fee — making Duoliang one of the few railway sites in Taiwan to charge for access. Tickets sold briskly. The fee did nothing to deter the crowds.

The designation appears in travel guides, tourism websites, and news articles with the kind of frequency that suggests broad agreement rather than marketing spin: Duoliang is routinely called Taiwan's most beautiful railway station. The claim is contested in the way that all superlatives are, but the case is easy to make visually. The platform sits at a dramatic angle to the coastline, elevated above the rail line, framing a view that combines the infrastructure of transportation with the scale of the Pacific. No train stops here anymore. No passenger buys a ticket to travel. Yet the platform sees more visitors now than it ever did when it was a working station.

Duoliang Station runs parallel to Provincial Highway 9, the main road along Taiwan's southeast coast. Getting there requires either a car — the site sits in a stretch where public transport is limited — or a bicycle along the coastal route, which is itself a popular long-distance cycling corridor. The nearest town with services is Taimali, the township seat a few kilometers to the north. Visiting in the early morning rewards patience: the eastern exposure means the platform catches the first light of day directly, and photographers have long known to arrive before sunrise to capture the coast in gold.