Curitiba–Paranaguá Railway (Serra Verde Express)

A 19th-century railway that drops from Curitiba down the Serra do Mar escarpment to colonial Morretes, through Atlantic rainforest, tunnels and cliffside viaducts.

The route

The railway from Curitiba to the port of Paranaguá was built to link the farmland of Brazil's southern plateau with the Atlantic. Between the two stands the Serra do Mar, a forested escarpment that falls almost 1,000 m to the coastal plain. Construction began in 1880, and the line opened in February 1885, after thousands of workers had cut ledges and tunnels into the mountainside, largely by hand.

What makes it remarkable is that it handles the descent without a rack. Instead the engineers wound the track along the slopes, using 13 tunnels and dozens of bridges and viaducts to keep the gradient workable for ordinary adhesion trains. The best known are the São João bridge, high over a ravine, and the Carvalho viaduct, which hugs the cliff on five curved masonry piers between two tunnels.

Freight still uses the line, but for visitors it is the Serra Verde Express tourist trains that matter. They run the roughly 70 km from Curitiba down to Morretes at an unhurried pace, slow enough to take in the forest and the drops beside the track. The full line continues past Morretes to Paranaguá on the coast, but the tourist service ends in Morretes, and the trip has become one of the most popular rail journeys in Brazil.

What you will see

The film begins in Curitiba and runs out through the city and its suburbs across the gently rolling plateau. This first part is flat and quiet, and it gives little hint of what lies ahead. Around Roça Nova, at roughly 950 m the highest point of the line, the train reaches the edge of the Serra do Mar, and the longest tunnel on the route marks the start of the descent.

From here the scenery is dense Atlantic rainforest, with the track clinging to the slopes and passing through one short tunnel after another. Look for the São João bridge, where the ground drops away sharply below the train, the Véu de Noiva waterfall spilling down a rock face, and the Carvalho viaduct, where the train seems to hang in the air over the forest. Around Marumbi the granite peaks of the Marumbi massif rise on the other side of the valley.

Lower down the air gets warmer and the vegetation thicker, with banana plants appearing as the line reaches the coastal plain. The journey ends in Morretes, a small colonial town founded in the 1700s on the Nhundiaquara River.

Riding it for real

Serra Verde Express runs tourist trains from Curitiba to Morretes, with several classes from standard tourist seats to boutique cars with drinks and snacks, and the Litorina, a self-propelled luxury railcar like the one in this video. Trains are slow, so the trip takes most of a morning. Many visitors have a long lunch in Morretes, where the local speciality is barreado, a beef stew slow-cooked in a clay pot, and return to Curitiba by road.

Travel in the drier months if you can, since cloud often fills the Serra in summer. Tickets are sold online and services vary with the season, so check Serra Verde Express for current timetables and fares.

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