About this journey

Corupá sits in the hill country of Santa Catarina, and from its station the Baldwin 761 Mikado 2-8-2 sets out toward Rio Negrinho on a line whose origins reach back to 1910, when construction of the Estrada de Ferro São Francisco do Sul began in earnest. That railway was built by the Brazilian Railway Company, which used the route not only to move freight but to settle Teutonic-Brazilian colonists from the Santa Catarina coast along its length — a pattern repeated across the region as the iron road drew Italian immigrants northward from Rio Grande do Sul.

The territory the line crosses was the theatre of the Contestado War from 1912 to 1916, a conflict inseparable from the disruption the railway brought to established communities. Today the same tracks fall under freight administration by América Latina Logística, while the ABPF — the Associação Brasileira de Preservação Ferroviária, founded in 1977 — keeps steam running over them through its Regional Santa Catarina chapter. Rio Negrinho station, inaugurated in 1913 and now operating as a museum, receives the locomotive at journey's end at an altitude of 790 metres, a reminder that the line climbs steadily into the Santa Catarina highlands throughout its course.