The Maria Fumaça

The gauge that made this railway obsolete is the reason its trains still run. In 1879 the Estrada de Ferro Oeste de Minas chose a track of 762 millimetres, two and a half feet, and grew on it to a network of more than 700 kilometres across Minas Gerais. No other railway in Brazil used that gauge, so as the network shrank its locomotives and coaches could not be sent anywhere else, and no modern stock was ever built to replace them. What was scrapped on other lines kept working here.

Commercial traffic ended late in 1982 and the rest of the network was lifted in 1983 and 1984. The 12.8 kilometres between São João del-Rei and Tiradentes were kept for visitors, and with them three American steam engines picked to stay in service: nos. 41 and 42, Baldwin "Ten Wheelers" of 1912, and no. 68, a Baldwin "Consolidation" of 1919. The operator says the stretch has carried passengers without interruption since Emperor Pedro II opened it on 28 August 1881.

The ride takes about forty minutes each way, along the Rio das Mortes under the quartzite wall of the Serra de São José, between two towns of the eighteenth-century gold rush. Since 1 October 2026 the train has been run by the ABPF, the Brazilian railway preservation association, whose members do the work as volunteers.

Trains leave from beneath the iron train shed of São João del-Rei, opened in 1881 and enlarged in 1920, with the railway museum and the roundhouse beside the platforms. The whole complex, the line to Tiradentes and the stations of Chagas Dória and Tiradentes were listed by IPHAN, the national heritage institute, in 1989.

The line

The first stretch runs through town, over level crossings, to the halt at Chagas Dória. Then the train is in open country: for much of the way it follows the Rio das Mortes, past old farms, streams and pasture, with the Serra de São José ahead. The longest bridge on the line, 57 metres over the Rio Elvas, marks the boundary between the two municipalities. Film crews have long used the line as a set, for Os Saltimbancos Trapalhões, Hilda Furacão and Os Maias among others.

The engines

Three steam locomotives work the trains, all built by Baldwin in Philadelphia for the Oeste de Minas. Nos. 41 and 42 are "Ten Wheelers", 4-6-0s from one order of July 1912, and neither has ever been withdrawn. No. 68, a 2-8-0 "Consolidation" of September 1919, was the only one of its type the railway bought; it stood on display in the roundhouse from 1991 to 1998 and has worked again since 1999. In their last commercial years all three hauled limestone and gypsum to the cement works at Barroso, and cement back for the building of the Itaipu dam.

The coaches

The nine wooden coaches date from the 1910s to the 1930s: some from Harlan and Hollingsworth in the United States, some built in Rio de Janeiro between 1913 and 1919, and the rest in the railway's own workshops. They come in three classes, and the view is the same from all of them: first has upholstered armchairs, second varnished wooden seats with armrests, and third plain slatted benches, with the railway's OM monogram cast into the luggage-rack brackets.

The train runs on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, from both ends of the line. Each trip takes about forty minutes, and each direction is a separate one-way ticket. The times below are the operator's, read on efom.org.br in November 2026; arrivals are about forty minutes after departure.

Fridays and Saturdays

Sundays

Only the first pair runs: 10:00 from São João del-Rei and 11:30 from Tiradentes, so a round trip on a Sunday leaves less than an hour in Tiradentes.

Holidays have their own timetable, published separately; ask the operator at efom@abpf.com.br. See efom.org.br (opens in a new tab) for the current departures.

One-way fares are R$ 110 in first class, R$ 90 in second and R$ 80 in third, in either direction; a round trip is two tickets. Seats are not reserved within a car. Students, people aged 60 or over and people with disabilities pay R$ 73, 63 or 58: the discount does not apply to the R$ 36 boarding fee; under-fives ride free on a lap.

Buy online through AppTicket, which adds a service fee, or at the station ticket offices on running days. Residents of the two towns pay R$ 40 in third class at the station only. Fares from the operator, valid to 30 November 2026.

No rail pass covers the Maria Fumaça. Interrail and Eurail are European schemes, and Brazil is not among the countries in Interrail's list of covered railway companies. The operator sells only its own one-way tickets for each departure.

Checked November 2026 against Interrail's list of railway companies (opens in a new tab), updated 21 October 2026.

The train joins two towns of the gold rush, and both reward a day of their own: São João del-Rei with its churches, bridges and railway museum, and Tiradentes with its colonial streets under the Serra de São José.

Tiradentes, the smaller of the two towns, is where the first pousada opened in its historic centre in 1972; São João del-Rei is the larger town, at the departure end of the line.

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