Paranapiacaba

The Sao Paulo Railway Company, British-owned, built this village in the 1860s and rebuilt it in the 1890s to house the workers running the cable-hauled inclines that lifted coffee trains up the Serra do Mar escarpment from Santos - a serious engineering problem, solved with stationary steam engines hauling wagons up in stages. The village is laid out on a grid of numbered streets in wooden houses of graded size by rank, with a clock tower modelled on a British pattern, an engine house and workshops. It sits at eight hundred metres on the edge of the escarpment where the humid air off the sea condenses, so it is in fog for a large part of the year, which is the thing everyone photographs.

History

The British-owned São Paulo Railway Company founded the village in the middle of the 19th century while building its line to carry coffee down to the port of Santos, a zig-zag climb over hilly ground counted a feat by its engineers and workers, and it laid the village out on a plan modelled on Jeremy Bentham's prison design. At one time it had 4,000 workers, most of them British, and it prospered for 30 years until machinery replaced the labour-hungry funicular, after which its population fell and many buildings stood empty; the last steam train here ran in 1982 (Wikipedia, Paranapiacaba).

What to look for

• A British railway village - wooden houses on a numbered grid, sized by rank.
• The incline machinery - engine house and workshops from the cable haulage.
• A clock tower - the company landmark at the centre.
• Near-permanent fog - sea air condensing on the escarpment edge.

When to go

April to September. A day.

Before you go

It is cold, wet and foggy far more often than not - bring layers regardless of season. Some buildings are closed and the restoration is incomplete. The tourist train runs only on selected weekends and books out. Facilities in the village are minimal.

Nearby

Santo Andre is below; Santos and the coast are down the escarpment.

Key facts