The Parish Magazine March 2023

feature — 2
A real Brazilian home from home
In the late 1950s I was a foreman
fitter responsible for maintenance
of cranes and machines operated
by George Wimpey, a large civil
engineering contractor that today
is in a house building partnership
with Taylor Woodrow. As part of
the overseas department, I had
completed a 2 year contract in
Kuwait, as well as some local work
in the UK. I was then asked to go to
Brazil in January 1960 and the next
4 years became the most interesting
of my early life — I was 29 years old.
I was to be in charge of the rock drill
department on Wimpey's hydro
electric dam project in Furnas, Minas
Gerais, but the 2 year contract was
extended to 4 years after a fatal
explosion in one of the tunnels that
diverted the Rio Grande River while
the dam was being built.
However, this was not a problem
for me because my hobby was, and
still is, studying, and modelling,
foreign railways — Brazil had plenty
to interest me! I had 2 weeks local
leave each year which I spent travelling
around the states of Sao Paulo and
Minas Gerais on the many railways
that operated there.
DIVERSION
In 1962, my brother-in-law, a
master mariner whom I had not met,
was to be in Santos on his way home
from a voyage in the Pacific. It was a
good opportunity to meet him, and see
Santos, one of Brazil's main ports, so
I arranged to travel to Sao Paulo and
go by train to Santos. But, as soon as
everything was in place, the owner
diverted John's ship to Cape Town so
we did not meet. However, I decided to
carry on and took a Mogiana Railway
The Furnas hydroelectric dam in Brazil.
train to Sao Paulo. After a night's rest, I
got a local, four car train on the Santos
-Jundiai railroad to Santos, a trip of
about 80 miles.
Brazil's Atlantic coast has a curious
geographical feature of a narrow flat
plain all the way from Bahia in the
north to Santa Catarina in the south, a
distance of about 1,200 miles.
It varies from being 10 miles wide
to about 50. On the inland or western
side of this plain is a steep rise to
the central plateau and in the Santos
area the rise is a steep escarpment
about 800m high. The railways from
the various Atlantic port cities had
to climb this, usually on special track
rails or by zigzag inclines.
INCLINED PLANES
Luckily, inland from Santos there
was a narrow rising valley which could
possibly be the route of a railroad but
it would have to be a funicular (cable)
with rope haulage due to the steep
gradient needed to climb 800m in the
horizontal distance of 10.5km. I had
read of this railroad but never thought
that one day I would ride along it.
It had a series of five inclined
planes each ending in a short level
section or 'patamar' in Portuguese.
Under each patamar was a 1,000hp
The Parish Magazine - March 2023 17
By Michael Ingram
Roberto Epifanio Da Silva, dreamstime.com
steam engine serving one of the five
inclines. A descending train stopped at
a station named Paranapiacicaba and
was broken up into sets of two 50 ton
cars and was moved to the head of the
rope on the level patamar by a steam
locomotive.
GRIPPERS
This was similar to a UK guard's
van and 20 of these were built in
Britain by Robert Stevenson in
Darlington. Called a 'Grip', their task
was to grip the rope so they could be
taken down at the speed that the rope
moved at. They could also work as a
locomotive to move each pair of 50 ton
cars onto the rope.
Grips were powerful enough to
move, at slow speed, two cars onto
the next lower rope at each patamar.
The cars in use on the Santos-Jundiai
line were used for both passenger and
freight trains.
The track had only three rails
between the patamars but four rails
on the patamar to allow climbing and
descending trains to pass.
As the descending, or ascending,
grip and its two cars reached the level
patamar the loco dropped the rope
and pulled the two cars to the end of
turn to page 19
Sao Paulo station. Rodrigo Loureiro, dreamstime.com Santos-Jundiai railroad tracks. Nandobrasil, dreamstime.com