While reading an excellent book about the situation in Korea between 1945 and 1950 (“The War for Korea, 1945-1950: A House Burning” by Allan Millett”) I noticed on one of the maps that there were at that time in Korea several narrow gauge railway lines. On the Ongjin peninsula, to the west of Haeju, there used to be several narrow gauge lines, built in the Japanese colonial period. With the current economical situation in North Korea it is unlikely that trains are still running on these lines, but they are certainly not narrow gauge anymore, having been regauged a long time ago. According to the book “Communist logistics in the Korean War” by Charles Shrader in 1950 there were 523 miles of narrow gauge in the whole of Korea. Luckily this book can be found at Google books, see here for the relevant pages.
South Korea had its share of narrow gauge lines. The most notable of these was the Inchon to Yeoju line, a line which as a narrow gauge line was only closed in 1995, with earlier closures on parts of the line. The main center of the line was at Suwon, a town to the south of Seoul, and effectively the line ran mainly from west (Inchon) to east (Yeoju). The western part was named the [W: Suin Line], while the eastern part was named [W: Suryeo Line], and the latter was abandoned in May 1973, while the former was finally abandoned in 1995, but has now been rebuild as a standard gauge line.
I have put up several of the Korea maps as dynamic maps. You can find the narrow gauge line from Inchon to Yeoju quite easily on these maps. The maps can be found here:
– The western part and part of the eastern line can be found on this map
– The rest of the network to the east can be found here
If you know how to navigate through Google Earth/Maps or NASA World Wind you know how to navigate through these maps. (I will put up the rest of Korean soon and will even try to create one large map set, but until then I have these two plus the Jeju map online.)