| Curitiba - Train Ride - History |
Serra Verde Express
Avenida Presidente Afonso Camargo, 330 - Estação Ferroviária - Curitiba - PR
History
The Railway Curitiba-Paranaguá began to be built in 1880 and took more than
5 years to be finished. It was a extraordinary feat according to the standards of that period and, until it was finished, was the cause of
the disbelief of the best foreign engineers of the world because they thought it was impossible to built a railway in this place. And it was
precisely a group of brazilian engineers that transformed this this project into a reality, executing true architectonic feats so that the
railway could be built.
The railway was necessary to transport the goods that arrived in the seaport of
Paranaguá and Antonina to the region of Curitiba. When the ships anchored in the region, the goods has to go by the Nhundiaquara river in
small boats until the city of Morretes, where the Cima Seaport was located. From there, the products were put on the back of mules and
transported to Curitiba on trails throught the Atlantic Forest.
It took at least four days for the shipment leave the port and arrive in the
capital. So much hardship and the pressure of the large local farmers that wanted agility in the transportation of grains to increase the
business in the region, served as a stimulus for the workers and engineers.
Nine thousand men were hired to alternate the working shifts in the
construction of the Railway Curitiba-Paranaguá, which was 110 kilometer long. In spite of the fact that slavery hadn't been abolished at the
beginning of the construction, in 1880, slave work was not used in the construction of the Railway Curitiba-Paranaguá. The employees were
in the majority european immigrants and some africans, besides the farmers who abandoned the fields to try their luck in Curitiba and in
the villages in the region of the coasts of Paraná. In the beginning of 1885, the railway was finally inaugurated. The firts train left
Paranaguá at 10 am, full of famous figures of the society, arriving in Curitiba at 7 pm.
In the 110 kilometer of railway, there are daring projects of engineering,
specially the tunnels, bridges and viaducts which are the elevated trancs. Among the most imppressing parts of the railway is the Carvalho
viaduct, built on pillars of stone. This port gives the tourists the feeling that they are flying because the tracks make a curve and the
passengers can appreciate the beauty of the sierra.
The most interesting thing is that the Carvalho viaduct wasn't projected in
the original plant and was built by chance. The engineer responsible for this part of the project was going to build a tunnel, but he
exagerated in the amount of dynamite that shoul have been used to hole the rockand ended up exploding too much of the wall. since it would
have been impossible to make a tunnel, he had to adapt the project and build the viaduct, which today is one of the principal tourist
attractions.
Another important point of the railway is the São Paulo beach that passes at
an altitude of 55 meters over the valley and divided in four that add up to an extention of 110 meters. Today, it has several reinforcements
because the quantity of freight that passes on the railway is very big: around 20 tons per day. When it was built the traffic of goods
reached the mark of 20 tons only at the end of a year.
It isn't by luck that today the Paranaguá seaport is one of the largest
exporter of grains of the country. It is exactly though the railway that the flow off of goods is done. Besides the freight trans the Railway
Curitiba-Paranaguá also has a train for tourist, fundamental to show the tourists the beauty of the place and also to show an important part
of the history of Brazil. |
Presentation
