The Americas

by Michael Frewston

  Brazil’s first railway arrived in 1845, one of the first in South America, and reputedly the first in the Americas south of the Equator. It ran from Fragoso to Mauá, near Rio de Janeiro, and then to Praia da Estrela, a distance of 15 km. Apparently the gauge measured 1680 mm, although it would appear obvious it was meant to be 1676 mm Indian gauge.

  Why Indian gauge for this first railway (some 10 years or so prior to Argentina’s first railways – see above)? There appears to be no recorded history on this, but we can speculate a little. 1676 mm (5 ft 6 in) gauge was an already established gauge in Scotland at that time, and it could well be that the British builder of Brazil’s first railway was in fact Scottish. This gauge was also becoming the predominant gauge on the Indian sub-continent (see Part 5). Either of these two factors could have influenced Brazil’s first railway’s gauge.

  The additional 4 mm taking the actual gauge to 1680 mm (if indeed this was the case) was likely mistakenly appended, considering that measuring instruments were relatively crude back then, although it could have been deliberately added to allow for that extra side play that so many railway builders (Brunel included) deemed necessary in those early days

  Is there a connection between both Argentina’s and Brazil’s use of nominally the same Indian gauge of 1676 mm? I personally don’t think so. As mentioned above, Argentina chose 1676 mm as a result of an accident of history in the late 1850s involving the Crimean War – some ten years or more after Brazil’s first railway. The use of the same nominal gauge does seem to be a coincidence.

  But this use of a nominal Indian gauge in Brazil was not to last. Subsequent broad gauge building used the Irish gauge of 1600 mm (5 ft 3 in) – a gauge otherwise seen, outside of Ireland itself, only in Australia (see Part 6). Again, there seems to be no recorded history why this gauge was selected – perhaps another of the first British builders in Brazil came from Ireland! Most 1600 mm gauge railway building was initially concentrated in and radiated out from Rio de Janeiro.

  The predominant narrow gauge (and the third of Brazil’s most common gauges) was one metre, and the first railway in Brazil using 1000 mm gauge was the Leopoldina Railway, established in the 1870s. Once the largest British-owned railway in Brazil, it was an amalgamation of nearly forty smaller companies, and had over 3000 km of metre-gauge route distance at its peak.

  The Leopoldina Railway also developed a network of Indian gauge lines in the Nictheroy (today Niterói) area, opposite Rio de Janeiro, in order to permit the transhipment of goods without undergoing breaks of gauge.

  As well as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo was also receiving its first railways. One of the most important of these early railways was the 1600 mm gauge line between São Paulo and Santos, with construction starting in the late 1850s, and opened in 1867. Originally mis-named as the San Paulo Railway, it was described as “Britain’s most successful foreign transportation undertaking”. Considering how far Britain’s railway tentacles were spreading at this time, with the country spearheading railway building on nearly every continent, this was quite a claim to be making. Nonetheless, it is indicative of just how deep was Britain’s involvement in South America’s development in the 19th century.

  The San Paulo Railway was a unique undertaking, consisting of an 18-km long initial first section, which was then followed by 9 km of rope haulage up a long climb. The final section was 53 km long, across an 800-m high plateau. Today the cable-hauled section is replaced by a line on a new alignment using what has been termed a rack-and-adhesion principle.

  Not all of Brazil’s early railways were to 1600 mm gauge, a gauge that was initially concentrated in the south-east of the country, but eventually spread up along the eastern coast. In fact, most of the long distance railways were to metre-gauge, especially in the north-east, south-east and southern areas of Brazil. Some lines were dual-gauged in the south-east, where both gauges are to be found.

  As with Argentina, the most likely reason for choosing 1000 mm gauge was to link up with the already established metre-gauge railways in Chile, especially as all such lines traversed the high Andes, and the narrow gauge permitted sharper curves and lower costs over what are very long distances in some of the most challenging terrain in the world.

  One of these narrow gauge railways was known as the Devil’s Railroad. Built, it is believed, to metre-gauge, in the years from 1907 to 1912, it runs from Madeira to Mamoré, and was designed to gain access through the Amazon forest to the eastern coast. It gained its name through the large death toll in building it, mostly because of disease – it is said that one person died for each sleeper (tie).

  By the early 20th century, Brazil had over 40 000 km of main-line railway, of which about two-thirds was to 1000 mm gauge, one-quarter to 1600 mm gauge, and the rest encompassing a variety of gauges, including 750 mm (mostly mining railways), some 1435 mm Standard gauge, and a section of 1440 mm gauge (this was likely meant to be Standard gauge, with an extra 5 mm added for that all-important lateral play).

  But, just as with Argentina, anti-British sentiment set in over time, to the point that by the mid-1950s, Brazil’s citizens were calling for wholesale nationalisation of the foreign-owned railways. At this period, there were over twenty private railway companies (down from over forty many years earlier), most (though not all) British-owned, using British technology, British-supplied equipment (including motive power and rolling stock), and financed by British interests.

  In one fell swoop, in March 1957, the government of the day took possession of the lot, forming the State railway RFFSA in the process. And just as again happened in Argentina, the government-run railways slowly became ever more inefficient, while everything about the physical railways deteriorated to the point where trains became infrequent and unreliable. Most of the traffic, both passenger and freight, defected to the roads.

  In 1996, again just as in Argentina (and of course in the UK itself), Brazil’s railways were once again privatised, though this time owned by mostly Brazilian interests, with some American ownership thrown in for good measure, but the British were nowhere to be seen.

  The privatisation process took until 2009 to complete. Unlike with Argentina, where the newly-privatised railways were grouped roughly according to their track gauge, in Brazil some of these privatised railways, numbering around twenty, owned a mix of track gauges, primarily 1000 mm and 1600 mm gauge, but with a sprinkling of 1435 mm gauge (e.g. the Standard gauge Estrada de Ferro do Amapá) and 760 mm gauge here and there. With as many as six or seven railways owning both 1000 mm and 1600 mm gauge networks, there must be a loss of efficiency in being able to optimise motive power and rolling stock according to demand.

  As far as international links are concerned, they do exist, but are very complicated involving three different gauges – Brazil’s own 1600 mm gauge, 1000 mm (to Bolivia), and 1435 mm to Argentina and Uruguay.

  Main-line railways:

  Today, Brazil’s railways comprise over 29 000 km of route distance, the majority (around 23 000 km) owned by ALL (América Latina Logistíca). Of this total route distance, 4000 km is to 1600 mm gauge, 24 000 km is to 1000 mm gauge (including 400 km to dual 1600/1000 mm gauge), with the balance consisting of some 1435 mm gauge lines in the Amazon rainforest in the north of the country (around 200 km), together with other short 1435 mm gauge lines that link up with Argentina.

  There is little long-distance passenger traffic left, and what there is consists of as little as one train a day on each of two metre-gauge lines. When it comes to freight, today only 25% of Brazil’s freight moves by rail – less than one third of that in Russia, and just over half that in Canada. There is a major push by the government to get much of Brazil’s freight off the roads and back on to the rails – as with other countries we have encountered (e.g. South Africa, Australia), even the narrow gauge lines are more than capable of operating heavy haul freight trains over big distances if they are well engineered.

  Not wanting to be left out, Brazil is joining the very high spee
d club. A new 1435 mm Standard gauge High Speed Line is being built between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, with an extension to Campinas. It was hoped to have this line open by the time Brazil hosted the football (soccer) World Cup in 2014, but that didn’t happen – it will however be open in time for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, or so we are told. The line is being built by the Chinese, who once again are exporting their off-the-shelf high speed rail technology wherever they can.

  Will the use of Standard gauge on this high speed line instigate the conversion of the rest of Brazil’s broad gauge lines to 1435 mm? While this has been proposed, and on more than one occasion, the Brazilian Ministry of Transport, in a presentation regarding the future of Brazil’s railways, has stated that future main lines not using metre-gauge will maintain the existing ‘1.6 m’ (1600 mm) gauge – in fact, the government’s intention is to expand the amount of 1600 mm gauge route distance from its present 4000 km to over 11 000 km. Quite where that leaves the high speed line remains to be seen – possibly orphaned as in other countries where the high speed uses Standard gauge and the legacy railways use something different.

  The decision to keep to the broad gauge is because it is unlikely that any new long-distance passenger operations will ever appear, especially any needing to link up with the High Speed line – all the other new lines being built or planned in Brazil are dedicated to the movement of freight, while long distance passenger traffic outside of the São Paulo-Rio de Janeiro corridor has been acknowledged to be lost to air travel, at least for the foreseeable future.

  Metros and trams:

  Like so many places in the world, Brazil once had a huge number of major tram and street railway systems, over 100 in fact, most of which were eventually closed down – only to have new replacement systems built in recent years. For example, Rio de Janeiro claims to have been operating electrically-powered trams before any of the major European cities (London, Paris, etc.), while the city of Salvador once had a large street running railway network, first opened in the late 1800s, and roughly split into lower and upper systems, with both to 1435 mm gauge. It was closed in 1961. None of these tram systems survived beyond 1971, although the metros survived a bit longer.

  The new systems being built or now open, unlike what is usually typical practice, are, with just two exceptions, not to Standard gauge. Instead, they take their gauge cues from the main-line railways they either connect up with, or are at least geographically in close proximity to. Thus we see a mix of metre-gauge and Irish gauge systems. That in Salvador, currently under construction, is being built to 1600 mm gauge – the old system was Standard gauge.

  The following lists the various systems currently operating or under construction. I have combined metros and trams, as, as we have seen elsewhere, the distinction between them can be difficult, although I have identified whether each system is a tram or a metro wherever possible.

  1600 mm gauge systems:

  Belo Horizonte (metro)

  Brasilia (metro)

  Macapá (pier tram)

  Porto Alegre (metro)

  Recife (metro)

  Rio de Janeiro (light rail)

  Rio de Janeiro (metro)

  São Paulo (metro) (not Line 5 – see later)

  Salvador (metro)

  1100 mm gauge systems:

  Santa Teresa (Rio de Janeiro) Tramway

  1000 mm gauge systems:

  Belém (heritage tram)

  Brasilia (airport link to metro)

  Campinas (heritage tram)

  Campos de Jordão (interurban tram)

  Carira (metro)

  Crato-Juazeiro do Norte (interurban)

  Fortaleza (metro)

  Rio de Janeiro (light railway)

  Santos (heritage tram), originally 1350 mm as once seen in Scotland, closed in 1971 but reopened in 2000

  Other gauges exist, some unusual. The light railway once known between 1911 and 1959 as the Estrada de Ferro Guaíra a Porto Mendes (subsequently known as Erradicada) was to the Decauville 600 mm gauge, and totalled 60 km in length.

  The town of Itatinga has a tram system to 800 mm gauge, while the Santa Teresa two-line heritage tram system (noted above) in Rio de Janeiro is to the unusual gauge of 1100 mm. Quite where that gauge came from is not known, although it is a gauge seen in Germany (Kiel and Braunschweig), so perhaps German interests were behind the original trams in Santa Teresa. This tram system was suspended in 2011 following a major derailment involving a number of deaths – when the original state of the track is seen, a derailment is hardly surprising! However, the network, all of 6 km long, is being been rebuilt, a fleet of new replica tramcars has been put into service, and the line partially reopened in July 2015, with the remainder to open in 2017.

  The two Standard gauge exceptions are Line 5 of the São Paulo metro (Standard gauge was chosen in order to use off-the-shelf equipment to keep costs down), and the new tram system in Brasilia, recently opened, which also was able to use off-the-shelf equipment. As the Brasilia metro is to 1600 mm gauge, there can be no connection between the metro and the new tram system. The Standard gauge metro system in Santos, São Paulo, also recently opened, replaced a previous system closed in 1999, which used dual gauge (1600/1000 mm) tracks over much of its network.

  Finally, there are some funicular railways in Brazil, especially in Rio de Janeiro, that use a number of gauges – Standard gauge, a variant of this (1450 mm), metre gauge, or 914 mm.

  PERU

  On the basis of any form of reasoned logic, railways simply should not exist in Peru. The country is almost totally composed of terrain that is utterly alien to the railway – some of the highest mountains in the world rising steeply from a narrow coastal strip, very little flat land near the coast, few high level plains further inland, and, outside of its capital city Lima, a sparse population spread over a huge area.

  The first railway arrived in Peru in 1851, between Lima and Callao, a mere 14 km. But subsequent railway development after then was sporadic and disjointed – few lines interconnected with each other, and the government took a ‘hands off’ approach in letting entrepreneurs, primarily American, build new railways.

  Peru once boasted around 50 separate railway companies, each with their own line. Considering the marginal economic returns that must have been on offer (most of these railways were in fact freight lines, designed to transport minerals from the high interior to the coastal ports), together with the extraordinary difficulty (with the commensurate high costs) of constructing railways in such inhospitable territory, it is really quite amazing that so many lines not only existed at all, but were even remotely profitable.

  Even more amazing is the fact that the majority of these railways were built to just two main gauges – 1435 mm Standard gauge and 914 mm gauge. It is interesting that the choice of these two gauges was quite different from Peru’s neighbours, especially Brazil to the east (primarily 1000 mm and 1600 mm), Chile to the south (primarily 1000 mm and 1676 mm), and Bolivia to the south-east (1000 mm).

  Only Colombia, to the north, uses these same two gauges (see below), but as Colombia’s railways arrived after Peru’s, the choice of 1435 and 914 mm gauges in Peru had to have been made using other factors or criteria. Unfortunately, what those factors or criteria were was never recorded, or if they were, such records no longer exist.

  That’s not to say that other gauges didn’t exist in Peru – on the contrary, there was indeed a plethora of different gauges, including gauges seen nowhere else. Gauges once found in Peru, other than 1435 mm and 914 mm, included 750 mm (e.g. the Petroleum Railroads of Piura, as well as others); 600 mm (e.g. Eten-Estate Cayaltí Railroad); 1060 mm (e.g. Port Chicama (Malabrigo)-Valle Chicama Railroad); 1070 mm (Sugar railroads of Lima); 1000 mm (e.g. Playa Chica-Las Salinas Railroad); 1076 mm (Mining railroad of Cerro de Pasco); and finally 1050 mm (Lima-La Magdalena Railroads).

  [It’s quite possible that the gauges of 1060, 1070 and 1076 mm, and possibly even 1050 mm, are simply rounded or
corrupted conversions of 1067 mm (3 ft 6 in) gauge.]

  Without exception, all these railways operating at these different gauges (some unique and unusual to say the least, if indeed the actual stated gauges are true) have now closed. Although I’ve listed at least one railway for each of these now-defunct gauges, there were usually at least two or three others.

  Peru has the second highest railways in the world, with only the new railway to Tibet in China being higher (see Part 5), and then only by about 250 m. Many lines reach (or did reach until they were closed) altitudes of 4800 m or more.

  Today, only two main railways remain:

  The main railway is the Ferrocarril Central Andino (FCCA) (Central Railway of Peru) – 1600 km of 1435 mm gauge (including the FCHH section to Huancayo, regauged from 914 mm in 2010). The main purpose of this railway is to transport minerals down the mountains to the coastal port at Callao. The use of zig-zags or switchbacks is common in order to gain altitude in the limited distance available – this line contains 13 zig-zags, or switchbacks, (along with 14 bridges and over 60 tunnels) in the course of its route from Callao (home to Peru’s first railway) to Hauncayo, during which it reaches an altitude of 4820 m, second highest in the world.

  In this respect, the techniques to achieve successful train operations require high levels of skill and experience in terms of handling trains correctly. Too slow going downhill, and you burn the brakes out – too fast and you risk a major derailment. Getting the best out of the diesel locomotives at these high altitudes requires high levels of both forceful power application and gentle finesse in equal measure.