One of the touristic attractions of my hometown (a small village 150 km far from the city of Rio de Janeiro), Conservatória, is an old steam train parked in front of a former train station (a bus station, now). Tourists like to go there to take pictures and selfies, but I’m sorry that anyone cannot reach the city by train like my grandparents and my mother did when they first arrived in this city six decades ago.
In this small building that you can see bellow (not well conserved, it is true), there is a lot of history. It was inaugurated on November 21th, 1883, by Pedro II (Peter II). You can imagine how important it was at that time, by the presence of the Imperator himself.
After World War II, Brazil started its process of industrialization; a former president in 1960 decided to close a lot of railways in the country, including that one. Why? They said that they wanted to promote the automobile industry.
I can imagine how cool it would be a trip from the city of Rio de Janeiro to Conservatoria by train. I also wonder how many people would be able to use a more ecological kind of transportation (ok, a steam train is not precisely an environmental option, but they could have modernized the trains and even the railway).
The consequence of this decision is that there is an enormous lack of railways in Brazil. Excepting urban trains and some tourist ones, there is no option to travel long distances by train. The country is better covered by cargo railway transportation, but there was still a culture to prioritize road transport during the past decades. So, we still need a lot of investments in this sector.
Other related attractions
If you had the opportunity to visit my hometown one day, you’ll be able not only to see the former Train Station and the steam train (in Portuguese we call it “Maria Fumaça,” that literally means “Marie Smoke), but also the “Túnel Que Chora” (Tunnel that cries) and the “Ponte dos Arcos” (Arch Bridges).
A romantic story says that the Tunnel cries because it misses the people who visited Conservatoria and the people who moved from there to other places. Others claim that the crying is the moan of the slaveries who worked in its construction. Every time I visit this place, I can listen to them, and I regret even more that a railway that has cost so many lives was abandoned. ?
P.S: This post is part of the #monthlytopic, February, 2020 - Station proposed by @HiroyukiTakisawa to February. I’m posting it on the last day of the month in Brazil. Lamentably, it is already March in some countries, including Japan.
Thank you for sharing your experience with us.