Paranapiacaba and its Funicular

About this place

Paranapiacaba is an English-style railway village on top of the Serra do Mar range, in the municipality of Santo André, built in the 19th century by engineers of the British São Paulo Railway Company when Brazil needed to carry coffee from Jundiaí to the port of Santos down a steep escarpment. The engineers solved it with a funicular that hauled the wagons up by cable to a height of about 800 metres. The first system opened in 1867, running eight kilometres between Paranapiacaba station at the top and Raiz da Serra station at the foot, in Cubatão, split into sections pulled by stationary steam engines. The funicular ran until the 1980s, and tourist rides continued until 1994; today it is the «Technological Railway Museum of the Funicular», run by a railway preservation association, with the machinery, the traction system and the first locomotive used on the Santos–Jundiaí line. The village itself is an open-air museum: English timber houses, a clock tower, thick fog for much of the year and Atlantic Forest with guided trails. The museum opens at weekends and on holidays from 10 to 16 for a small fee, so check before you go.