The site opened on December 1, 1910, not as a full passenger station but as the Da'an River Signal Station — a control point for managing train movements through this stretch of the Former Mountain Line. A signal station is a working building, staffed and functional, but not designed for passengers. That changed on July 1, 1912, when a passenger building opened alongside it, and the combined facility was renamed Da'an Railway Station. In 1920, the name changed again to reflect the local place name more precisely.

The current structure is not the original one. The 1935 Shinchiku-Taichū earthquake — a magnitude 7.1 event that killed more than 3,200 people across central Taiwan — destroyed the wooden building. A concrete replacement went up in its place. Then, on March 1, 1954, the station received its final operational name: Tai'an Railway Station.

On September 24, 1998, the Former Mountain Line — the original railway route through the hills west of the central mountain range — ceased regular operation. A newer, more efficient line had been completed to the west, and the mountain route could not compete on speed or capacity. Tai'an station closed with it.

But where most closed stations are demolished or left to collapse, Tai'an was preserved. The Taichung City Government designated the building a historical monument, which meant not just protecting the structure but making a deliberate choice about what to keep. The railroad switches stayed in their last-used positions. The overhead power lines and the track connecting to Houli station were removed — those had practical reasons for going — but the station building itself, and the switches, and the platforms, remained. The result is a place that feels genuinely paused rather than performed.

In June 2010, for five days between the 5th and the 9th, the Former Mountain Line came back to life. A steam locomotive numbered CK124 pulled passenger cars between Tai'an and Sanyi station, a short segment of the original route that passes through some of the most dramatic mountain scenery on the line. The event was organized to promote tourism, and by that measure it worked: the combination of a working steam locomotive, mountain tunnels, and a landscape that hadn't changed much since the line was built drew considerable attention.

Since then, the Miaoli County Government has hosted six additional events using steam locomotives on portions of the old line. None of them are scheduled services — each one is a special occasion, requiring planning and announcement. But they demonstrate that the infrastructure, at least in sections, still holds. CK124 has become something of an ambassador for the mountain line's memory, appearing when the occasion calls for it and disappearing again into storage when it doesn't.

Tai'an Old Station sits in Houli District, where the foothills of the central mountain range begin to press in from the east. The landscape around it is green and hilly, the kind of terrain that made the mountain line both necessary and difficult — necessary because it connected communities in the hills, difficult because the grades and curves required engineering that wore on both equipment and schedules.

Today the station is a Railway Culture Park, which sounds grander than it feels in person. What it actually is: a wooden building of some age and character, surrounded by preserved track and unmoved switches, open to visitors who want to understand something about how Taiwan moved people before the highways came. The Taiwan Railways Administration attempted to renovate the full line for regular operation, but construction bids attracted no contractors. The old line remains old. The station waits. And occasionally, when the steam is up and CK124 is ready, the waiting ends for a few days.