About this journey

Desembargador station sits within the metre-gauge corridor of the Estrada de Ferro Vitória a Minas, one of only two surviving inter-city passenger railways in Brazil, operated today by the mining company Vale. The line runs along the Rio Doce valley, carrying daily passenger services alongside the heavy iron-ore freight trains that have made this railway's infrastructure internationally significant.

The EFVM reached this region in stages. The first stations in the Colatina area opened in 1906, with Baunilha inaugurated on 30 August and Colatina station following on 28 October of that year. By around 1907 the route was being located further inland, and on 15 August 1910 Governador Valadares received its first railway station — a moment that consolidated the settlement and opened the valley to coffee and timber export. The city took its current name on 17 December 1938, in reference to Benedito Valadares, then governor of Minas Gerais.

The locomotive hauling this journey is a GE BB40-9WM, one of a succession of General Electric models ordered by the EFVM, running on the same 1,000 mm gauge track that also carries some of the heaviest iron-ore trains in the world. Passenger services on the line operate at a maximum of 60 km/h, making the three-and-a-half-hour passage through the Rio Doce valley a measured, unhurried crossing between the two states of Espírito Santo and Minas Gerais.