About this journey

Rio Negrinho station, inaugurated in 1913, stands today as a heritage site and the departure point for this steam excursion behind a Baldwin 761 Mikado 2-8-2. The journey runs along the Linha do São Francisco, part of the former Estrada de Ferro São Paulo-Rio Grande, whose construction through this corridor of Santa Catarina took place between 1908 and 1910, driven by the Brazilian Railway Company. That same company settled Teutonic-Brazilian colonists along the route, and the arrival of the tracks drew further waves of Italian, German, Polish and Syrian-Lebanese immigrants to the highland interior.

Rio Negrinho sits at 790 metres on the Santa Catarina plateau, placing the line in elevated terrain well inland — some 93 km from Joinville on the coast. The plateau landscape is marked by pine and eucalyptus reforestation, and this broader region was the heartland of the Contestado War, fought between 1912 and 1916. Today the tracks are administered by América Latina Logística for interstate freight, yet the 2-8-2 covers the same alignment on its way to Corupá, tracing a corridor that has carried both settlers and commerce for more than a century.