About this journey

The journey departs from Sant'Ana do Livramento station, a town whose railway history reaches back to 1912, when it became home to Brazil's first train station with international traffic, linking the country's main cities to Montevideo and Buenos Aires. That cross-border ambition extended into Uruguay through infrastructure built by the North Western of Uruguay Railway Company, registered in London in 1882, which operated 182 kilometres of standard gauge line northward through this frontier region. A break-of-gauge station at Sant'Ana do Livramento marks where the railways of Brazil and Uruguay once met, though the international service is now disabled.

The line heads toward Palomas, a district that belongs to the municipality of Sant'Ana do Livramento itself. The North Western's route passed through Palomas as it extended northward toward Isla Cabellos and Cuareim, where an international bridge and a third rail once connected it to the Brazil Great Southern Railway. Today the destination is Palomas, known for a wine-producing operation spread across more than 500 hectares. The journey moves from a town declared in 2009 as the symbolic city of Brazilian integration with Mercosur member states through the quieter rural district where that same railway corridor once carried triweekly passenger services between two nations — a corridor now given over to vineyards and the open landscape of the southern Brazilian interior.