São Paulo Railway Company

The São Paulo Railway Company (SPR, nickname Ingleza, transl.: The English) was a privately owned British railway company in Brazil, which operated the 1,600 mm (5 ft 3 in) gauge railway from the seaport at Santos via São Paulo to Jundiaí. The company was nationalised in 1946 and became the Estrada de Ferro Santos-Jundiaí.

The São Paulo Railway consists of three parts:

Three different systems have been used to climbs the steep grade between Piassaguera and Paranapiacaba:

In 1859, a group of people led by the Barão de Mauá convinced the Brazilian government that it was important to construct a railroad connecting São Paulo to the seaport at Santos. The main purpose of the project was the transport of the coffee grown on the inland plateau to the Atlantic coast for export. The biggest difficulty was the task to overcome the steep east slope of the 800 meter high Serra do Mar, which was considered to be nearly impracticable. Therefore, Barão de Mauá asked England to clarify the feasibility of a railway line for locomotive hauled trains within a budget limit of 200,000 £. The biggest technician for this subject was consulted: the Scottish railroad engineer James Brunlees.

Brunlees visited Brazil and considered that the project was feasible. He recommended the engineer Daniel Makinson Fox to Barão de Mauá for the execution of the project. Fox was at that time only 26 years old but had experience in the construction of railways through the mountains of northern Wales and the hillsides of the Pyrenees. He realised that the railway can only climb the slope in the Serra do Mar if a 5 miles (8.0 km) long incline system is built. An adhesion railway would have used 26 miles (42 km) to overcome the slope and would have also overrun the 200,000 £ budget.

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