About this journey

Desembargador station sits within reach of Colatina, the city whose modern form the Estrada de Ferro Vitória a Minas did much to create. The railway first reached this part of Espírito Santo in 1906, when the line opened stations at Baunilha on 30 August and at Colatina on 28 October of that year. That early presence made the town the dominant logistics centre for north-western Espírito Santo, an axis reinforced when the first bridge over the Rio Doce was inaugurated in 1928.

The Estrada de Ferro Vitória a Minas is administered by the mining company Vale and runs on metre gauge — 1,000 mm track — connecting the metropolitan areas of Vitória and Belo Horizonte with both freight and daily passenger services. The line's maximum operating speed is 60 km/h. Haulage of iron ore over this route is the railway's industrial core, performed by specially built GE BB40-series locomotives; the cab ride here is behind a GE BB40-9WM. The terrain the line crosses is gently undulating, with few elevations exceeding 600 m and granite rock outcrops appearing across the municipality. By the time the journey reaches Regional Centro-Sul, the passenger train has traced a corridor where railway infrastructure, river crossings, and the landscape of interior Espírito Santo have remained inseparable for more than a century.