The Waterfalls' Train

(Uma versão em português deste texto está disponível aqui)

The Waterfalls' train was a short tourist composition that used to run on weekends in Rio Acima, small city in the state of Minas Gerais. It had been active for four years, between 2012 and 2015.   

The train was composed by one old steam locomotive and three passenger cars, one of them panoramic, with large glassed windows. 

Locomotive Elizabeth I leaving the station in direction to 

Honório Bicalho(Available in http://crat.com.br)

Somehow in a frustating way, the passengers discovered, only when they were bording in, that despite the name of the train, the term "Waterfalls" therein had nothing to do with the route itself, but with the fact that there are many waterfalls near the city. Because of those waterfalls, each car of the train was named after one of them: car one was 'Samsa', car two was 'Chicadona' and the last car was 'Véu da Noiva'. 

   Car 02 'Chicadona' in front of the station (available in http://crat.com.br)

The line the train run on was a short section of the old and now abandoned Downtown Line, a metric gauge (1,0 meter) line of the Central do Brasil Railway. Until the mid-90s the state-owned company RFFSA operated daily passenger trains on this line, connecting the city of Rio Acima to the capital Belo Horizonte. Since then, the RFFSA was privatized and this line remained abandoned for almost thirty years, but fortunaletly the businessman Flávio Iglesias decided to create a tourist project to put the train on the tracks again: the Waterfalls' Train Project. 

The total line used by the Waterfalls' Train had seven kilometers from one end to the other. In this short rail section, the composition left the station backwards until a railroadswitch located about one kilometer away, near the composition's garage. There, the locomotive switched the road and took the main line coupling the other side of the composition and then going back toward to the station. The composition passed by the station and went to the outskirts of Rio Acima, crossing an old metal brigde over a river and then, a few kilometers away, amidst a green natural enviroment, already in the limits of Horório Bicalho (a city next to Rio Acima) it stopped. The locomotive then took the other side of the composition and went back to the station again, where the next passengers waited for the new trip.

Locomotive beeng  maneuvered  on the turnout  near the station

Photo: Campos (2014)

The implantation of the Waterfalls Train was, among a few other examples, a rare fact in the country in the last decades.  Most of the train services were interrupted and many lines were abandoned or even supressed. To have the train back on track, Flávio Iglesias sought for help of the Brazilian Association for Railway Preservation (Associação Brasileira de Preservação Ferroviária) that helped him to recover the railway section that would be used by the train project, bought a steam locomotive and the three passenger cars. 

Locomotive Elisabeth  pulling passenger cars in frot of the station

Photo: Campos (2014)

Side plate on locomotive Elisabeth

Photo: Campos (2014)

The locomotive was a 1924 German machine (Orenstein und Koppel AK) of 0-4-0 wheel arrangement according to the Whyte notation. It was named Elisabeth I and came from Germany in the 40’s.

In Brazil, it pulled sugar cane wagons in alcohol industries and was abandoned for many years in the city of Timbaúba in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco until it was bought and renovated in São Paulo for the tourist project. 

Locomotive Elisabeth  before being renovated. 

Photo: Perez (2006). Inventário das locomotivas a vapor no Brasil. 

Locomotive Elisabeth before being renovated from another angule. 

Photo: Perez (2006). Inventário das locomotivas a vapor no Brasil. 

Photo: (Unknown autor) available in (O Tempo 03/09/2013)

The Waterfalls' Trains attracted  many tourists to the city of Rio Acima. The people involved in the Project hoped the train’s tracks would be extended to the nearby city of Nova Lima.The idea was to buy another locomotive that was in the state of Paraiba and would also be renovated. However, the idea of extension never had the chance to become real, beacuse in 2015 the train could not run anymore due to a disagreement between the mayor of the city and the project administration. 

The train was an iniciative of the private group CRAT (Centro de Referência Ambiental e Turística) in agreement with the mayor of Rio Acima and should work for ten year after its foundation.