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Private company

Estrada de Ferro Mauá

First railway in Brazil

The Mauá Railway (Portuguese: Estrada de Ferro Mauá), officially known as the Imperial Petropolis Steam Navigation and Railway Company (Imperial Companhia de Navegação a Vapor e Estrada de Ferro de Petropolis), was the first railway established in Brazil and the third in South America.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

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Pedra E.F. Maua
Photo: Unknown author Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons4

The Mauá Railway (Portuguese: Estrada de Ferro Mauá), officially known as the Imperial Petropolis Steam Navigation and Railway Company (Imperial Companhia de Navegação a Vapor e Estrada de Ferro de Petropolis), was the first railway established in Brazil and the third in South America.2

The story

The railway was built to connect the Mauá Port, at Guanabara Bay, and the base of the Estrela mountain, located at the region of the city of Petrópolis, state of Rio de Janeiro. The project's main objective was to ease the difficulties of transporting cargo and passengers between the coast of Rio de Janeiro and the state's interior, an important hub for coffee production - one of the main exports of Brazil at the time.

From Wikipedia’s article on Mauá Railway, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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