Farewell to the Brazilian Kombi
One of the unexpected pleasures of my trip to Brazil in July was the discovery that we would be travelling around in a convoy of four VW Kombi (T2) vans. Although they looked like heritage machines they were in fact relatively young, having been constructed by Volkswagen’s Brazilian operations within the last decade. The vehicles we picked up required a degree of manhandling to drive and did not always deliver the smoothest ride, but they certainly never lacked for character!
It seems remarkable to think that a design first introduced in 1950 should still have been rolling off a production line in 2013, but that story finally came to an end this month. Production in Brazil was scheduled to cease at the end of December 2013. The story of the last Kombis to roll off the production line has been covered in the Daily Mail story Volkswagen Kombi’s epic journey reaches end after 63 years whilst Volkswagen Brazil have recorded the last wishes of the Kombi.
Although there are plenty of these machines to be seen in Brazil, the sight of our Kombi convoy (or better still the dance of the Kombis as four machines manouevred out of their parking spots in unison) still caught the attention of anyone around. It’s not hard to see why. Farewell to the much loved Kombi!
Kombi Gallery
Reading the clouds
Our final day on the territory of the EF Doña Teresa Christina took us back to Eng. Paz Ferreira and the spectacular sight of Santa Fe no. 205 doing her best impression of a volcano as she departed with around 20 loaded wagons. It was a great sight to start the day, followed soon after by a run through the road crossing we had visited a few days earlier.
Throughout the day we had the diesel following close behind to retrieve the freight train after each run through which I am sure spared us from some of the difficulties that we experienced earlier in the week. Our translator, Marcia, told us that the local children thought that the steam locomotive was broken and that the diesel was coming to rescue it. Thankfully, on this occasion, that was not the case!
In the afternoon we headed to a rather spectacular rock cutting and watched in dismay as shadow fell on the line as our steam freight passed through. Inevitably, sunlight illuminated the rocks beautifully afterwards but the question we had to grapple with was, could we get a second runpast in sunlight when clouds were closing in rapidly? We waited and waited, trying to read the wind direction and the path of small gaps in the cloud cover.
The peril of betting on the wrong gap became apparent when the sun poked through a small gap in the clouds but quickly closed up again. It was 45 minutes before a slightly larger gap in the clouds looked set to give us a slim chance and the instruction to go was urgently transmitted by radio to the waiting crew. The steam freight passed through in perfect sunlight and disappeared moments later. Incredible!
The long wait was worth it for the shot it produced but had come at the price of the next photospot, the tunnel mouth outside Sideropolis, which was now in shadow after a brief moment in sunlight. It is a shot that will have to wait for the next tour to come here. It looked like this was the end of the light as we trekked back from the tunnel mouth to see Sideropolis under a blanket of clouds.
Our luck held a little longer, with glorious rays of sunlight greeting the arrival of the steam freight at Rio Fiorita’s wooden loading facility and setting up the perfect finale to our tour. Large crowds of locals had gathered at the level crossing to witness this final act in the week’s events which gave the end of the tour a rather unexpectedly lovely atmosphere.
In the evening the crew, translators, railway managers, museum team and our tour organiser were deservedly the toast of the room with many a speech taking us into the night. I am sure that the crew in particular needed their sleep after a hellish week in ‘the office’ but all of could say with absolute honesty that they had delivered a magnificent spectacle.
As I headed to bed the sound of thunder, lightning and torrential rain pounding down reminded me that luck really had swung our way today!
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Reflections from the lagoon
Today’s lunchtime stop brought us to the private waterfront property of a former mayor of Tubarão for a Brazilian style barbeque and a glass or two of a particularly potent caipirinha. It was a good opportunity to stop and reflect in beautiful surroundings.
Our spot on the edge of the Lagoa de Santo Antonio offered a wonderful view across to the far shore, which looked much as it might have done through the centuries. All along the shoreline you could see an array of wooden boathouses, whilst out in the lagoon itself a small group of fishermen passed by their nets.
As timeless as this seemed to us, it is a scene that will not last much longer as work has just started on a new four lane motorway bridge which will cut a new path across the lagoon and straighten the route of the BR101.
The new bridge is intended to eradicate the bottlenecks that we have seen build up all too easily on the approach to the existing bridge. The footprint of the new bridge can be clearly seen in this artist’s visualisation of the lagoon with the bridge and a short video on youtube qives a flythrough of the new bridge showing just what a dramatic difference this will make to the local landscape.
The railway first bridged the lagoon in the late nineteenth century, connecting the mainland to the Imbituba district with a 1430m long lattice-girder bridge. At the time it could justifiably claim to be the longest bridge in South America and, remarkably, it still stands to this day (albeit heavily corroded). A few sections have fallen away, but apart from that it is largely still intact – though I don’t think I would want to test its ability to hold up a heavy steam freight even were it to be possible to get one up there!
The original bridge was replaced in the 1930s by the Ponte Henrique Lage which was part causeway and part bridge. Although the new bridge better suited the heavier trains on the line, it came at the cost of environmental damage to the lagoon. The bridge still carries the railway line to Imbituba to this day – though it is a rare sight to see a steam locomotive racing the traffic on the adjacent highway.
The history of the existing bridge may have its critics but there is no denying that the sight of a steam freight working its way across its length is incredibly impressive. I don’t expect to return here but it will be fascinating to see the photographs of the completed bridge.
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Paint your wagon
The latest problem turned out to be much less serious than we had imagined and we were able to make it to Imbituba to take what we all expected to be the shot of the trip – Santa Fe no. 205 hauling a freight train past the lagoon with the south atlantic ocean in the distance. However, the story behind the shot is unquestionably bonkers…
The modern railway uses wagons with a white stripe, but in the 1980s the railway used stripeless wagons. To give us a historically accurate picture the railway had agreed to remove the white stripe from the wagons we would use for the nine days of our trip. However, the stripeless wagons that we loaded in Rio Fiorita had accidentally been discharged on their return to Tubarão and were now dispersed across the system. All the railway could offer us for our run to Imbituba were wagons with a white stripe.
I must confess that I am not absolutely devoted to historical accuracy, so I could have lived with a white stripe but this would have been anathema to purists. After some considerable discussion a compromise was reached – the railway agreed that we could paint out the white stripe on the wagons they could supply to us! It seemed a small price to pay to get things moving again. Our convoy of minibuses rolled out of the museum grounds and headed for Imbituba, via the local paint shop.
At Imbituba we stretched out along the line, armed with spray cans and roller brushes, awaiting the arrival of our freight train (hauled in by a diesel, which would be detached for the run pasts). The moment the wagons came to a halt we got to work, painting out the white stripe on the 14 wagons – though only on the side that would be photographed! On the strength of my efforts I think it is safe to say that I do not have an untapped talent for painting and should not be entrusted with a brush anytime soon…
The paint job was finished surprisingly quickly which was down to everyone playing their part and getting stuck in. We returned to the minibuses and headed to a roadside spot looking down on the line, the lagoon and the ocean beyond. It was a stunning backdrop for our freight train and a scene that I wouldn’t have missed for anything, no matter how mad the build up had been. I fear that for all our efforts we only succeeded in replacing an inauthentic white line with an inauthentic shiny brown line, but I didn’t care a hoot by this point. A beautiful moment had been captured.
We could relax a little now, enjoying a couple of shots further down the line as we headed back to Tubarão. The motorway was heavily clogged with traffic, but when we got going again there was a memorable stretch of driving running parallel to our freight train – exchanging friendly waves. Finally, we ended our day near Cabecudas where we grabbed a last shot before the light faded.
The story of the day was that, once again, victory had been clutched from the jaws of defeat.
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Three new problems and a setback
An early morning drive down the motorway brought us to Eng. Paz Ferreira station (Criciúma, Santa Catarina) for an early start with Santa Fe no. 205. The locomotive underwent something of a transformation in the yard with the smokebox and chimney painted black to give it a more authentic look (something that we particularly appreciated after last night’s video screening showed how things looked in the 1980s).
There are some areas of Criciúma that are not particularly safe for tourists to wander into but it so happens that this is precisely where the line goes – cutting a path through an area that was described to us as the ‘backyards of drug dealers’! It didn’t look too threatening when we turned up but we heeded the warning not to venture in, watching as Santa Fe no. 205 steamed through.
The locomotive attracted plenty of attention, with locals coming out from their homes and workplaces to get a closer look. As the crew answered questions from their loco’s new admirers we drove on to the next position – a long abandoned loading point that looked rather splendid in its crumbling state.
The next stop, on a gradient, gave us one last magnificent burst of steam power before Rio Fiorita. The locomotive had to pass through without stopping as it needed to clear the line for the diesel freights coming out. Finally, we made it to Rio Fiorito in late morning.
The coal from the mines at Siderópolis comes in by truck and after being dumped, the coal is transferred into the loading facility by conveyor belt and deposited into the waiting wagons. At least that was the theory… but as ever, there were a few problems to overcome first! They had run out of coal to load into our wagons, our loco was short of water and there were no paths to get us out of there…
The midday heat made the loading facility a somewhat unforgiving location to rest, with little in the way of shade, but we had no choice but to wait it out. In the meantime, a local journalist from Radio Siderópolis turned up to gather material for the strange story of the foreign tourists visiting Siderópolis, admittedly not a well known tourist destination, in search of steam. The resulting story and photographs can be seen at Turistas visitam Siderópolis para conhecer a „Maria Fumaça“.
A water truck organised by a Brazilian railway enthusiast turned up at 1pm and solved our first problem with impressive speed. As all this was taking place the trucks continued to deliver coal and by the time we were ready there were sufficient supplies to load our train – a process that has now been captured from every conceivable angle by umpteen photographers.
The process took a while but by the end we had 14 full wagons, giving us a load of approximately 1120 tons. A path was available to us, meaning that we could finally make our escape from Rio Fiorita – heading off in our minibuses around 3pm. Our destination was a gradient on the approach to Siderópolis where we saw our freight train struggle with her load before finally stopping 800 metres from the tunnel. It might have been a different story in the days of real steam when the locos were in much better condition but today, with not enough of the good coal left, it was just too much. When asked what he would do differently next time, our tour leader said he would take 13 loaded wagons!
The crew asked for a diesel to come and assist, whilst once again an admiring crowd looked on. It was clear that our day of photography was at an end so it was time to relax a little before the long drive back. No-one needed to be told that tomorrow was likely to be problematic.
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Return from Urussanga
The early morning wake-up call was probably the last thing anyone wanted to hear after a late night shoot, but it was just so good to have things finally working smoothly enough that we could start so early. At least we got to sleep in our own beds which is more than could be said for one member of the crew, who stayed with the locomotive all night (in a box car).
Our locomotive, Alco no. 153, had spent the night at Urussanga and the plan was to work this back to Tubarão where it would cross with the second locomotive, Santa Fe no. 205, on its way to Eng. Paz Ferreira. Our day would start with no. 153 and then switch to 205 when they crossed.
The picture we shot at Urassanga with the wooden coal loading facility and a Volkswagen beetle stopped at the crossing could so easily have been a moment in the 1980s when steam was in everyday use here.
In reality, the owner of a VW beetle had been persuaded to join us for a staged scene with the car carefully parked in the optimum position for photographs. The owner assumed this was enough but who abandons a car at a level crossing!? No, we needed a driver… the owner laughed, got back in the car and then showed that he too could add his own touch of authenticity by pointing out that he would put his seatbelt on too!
After the eccentricities of the staged scene at Urussanga we followed our train back down the line, taking shots at a cutting en route to Esplanada and on a fairly uninspiring spot where the road runs parallel to the track (though this did allow me to grab a shot of our VW minibus with the loco passing by).
The final shot of the morning came at a gradient near Morro Grande which provided a great view of 153 approaching from a long way out, although we had to wait a while on the hillside to witness that. The delay suggested that things were not quite as perfect as we had thought, though none of us could understand exactly what the nature of the problem was. I hoped that it was another small but ultimately insignificant problem.
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