About this journey

The journey departs from Piratuba station in the state of Santa Catarina, a town whose origins are inseparable from the railway itself. Workers of the American firm Brazil Railway Company began settling here in 1910 while building the Estrada de Ferro São Paulo-Rio Grande, the line conceived to connect Brazil's southern region to the country's interior. The railway section through Piratuba was completed in 1913, and the station today preserves instruments from that founding period, serving as a listed attraction alongside the steam excursions run by the ABPF — the Associação Brasileira de Preservação Ferroviária, founded in 1977 and the largest steam heritage operator in Brazil. It is the ABPF's Regional Santa Catarina chapter that operates these trains along the surviving section of EF-153.

The route crosses the state boundary between Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, arriving at Marcelino Ramos station. That town grew substantially during the same construction era, becoming a significant transit point for Rio Grande do Sul's produce, though rail's economic importance there declined from the 1960s onward. Marcelino Ramos sits at the confluence of the Rio Pelotas and the Rio do Peixe, where those rivers join to form the Rio Uruguai. The journey thus moves between two states linked by a shared railway history, hauled by a Lima 311 Tenwheeler — a steam locomotive type belonging to the age that built this line.