Rio de Janeiro’s Corcovado Railway Opened 47 Years Before the Christ the Redeemer Statue

RIO DE JANEIRO · ENGINEERING

Almost every mountain railway in the world runs on one overhead wire. The Corcovado rack railway runs on two, and has since 1910.

The Corcovado rack railway was built to carry sightseers to an empty mountaintop. The thing they now go up to see arrived nearly half a century after the Corcovado rack railway did, and the train carried the pieces up itself.

The Corcovado Rack Railway Was Built for a View

Dom Pedro II inaugurated the first section on 9 October 1884, running from Cosme Velho toward Paineiras. The line to the summit itself opened to the public on 18 July 1885.

There was no statue. The attraction was the view, and a structure at the top called the Chapéu do Sol. The railway was a tourism venture from the start, which in 1884 was an unusual thing for a railway to be.

Christ the Redeemer was inaugurated on 12 October 1931. From 1926 the train hauled construction materials and statue components up the mountain, which is a neat inversion: the infrastructure predates and enabled the monument it is now known for serving.

The Numbers on the Corcovado Rack Railway Climb

The line is 3,824 metres long on metre gauge. The maximum gradient is 30 percent, with sections steeper than 45 degrees, which makes it the steepest railway in Brazil.

It gains around 700 metres of altitude. Ascent speed is about 25 kilometres an hour, descent about 18, and the journey takes roughly twenty minutes.

The rack is the Riggenbach system, a ladder of steel rungs between the running rails that a toothed wheel under the locomotive engages. The original 1884 steam locomotives already used it.

Two Wires, and Why That Is Rare

This is the part worth understanding, because it is genuinely rare and it is routinely described wrongly.

Rack railways are not rare. Switzerland alone has the Jungfraubahn, the Pilatusbahn, the Rigi lines and several more. Austria has the Schafbergbahn. Anyone calling the Corcovado line one of the world’s last rack railways is simply wrong.

What is rare is how it takes its power. The line runs on three-phase alternating current, which requires two independent overhead contact wires for two of the phases, with the running rails carrying the third. Almost every electrified railway in the world uses a single wire and a rail return.

The surviving family of three-phase railways is very small. Switzerland’s Gornergrat line is described as one of only four lines in the world using three-phase power, running at 725 volts with two overhead wires and an Abt rack.

Electrification came in 1910, following a decree of 29 July 1909, making this the first electrified railway in Brazil. The engineer Álvaro Rodovalho chose three-phase motors over direct current on the grounds that they were simpler, cheaper and would use substantially less energy on the grade.

Sources differ on the operating voltage, giving 750 volts at 50 hertz in the more detailed engineering accounts and 900 volts at 60 hertz elsewhere. The Rio Times has not been able to reconcile the two and does not print a figure.

Four Generations of Train

Steam from 1884. Swiss electric locomotives from SLM and Oerlikon from 1910, pushing the passenger cars from below so that the train remained under control on the descent. A Swiss-built fleet again in 1979 and 1980, and a full system overhaul in 1980.

The current generation came from Stadler Rail of Switzerland, unveiled on 12 June 2019 and in scheduled service from 9 October that year, the line’s 135th anniversary. Three trains, 134 passengers each, around R$200 million invested.

The operator reports the new fleet roughly doubled capacity to around 600 passengers an hour and cut energy consumption by about three quarters.

Who Runs the Corcovado Rack Railway Now

The concession is held by the Esfeco consortium, which has operated the line since 1979, together with Cataratas do Iguaçu, trading as Trem do Corcovado. The current contract runs from 7 November 2014 to 7 November 2032 and was tendered by ICMBio, which took over management of the site in 2013.

Adult tickets are R$134. The operator states more than 1.5 million passengers a year, up from a projected 1.2 million in 2023, though these are company figures rather than independently audited ones.

The railway has no recorded derailment or fatal accident in its history. In March 2025 a tourist died after falling ill on the stairway near the summit when the medical post was closed, and Rio’s consumer protection agency suspended ticket sales and van transport pending its reopening. That was a medical response failure, not a railway accident, and it should not be reported as one.

One further correction worth making. The original Cosme Velho station is protected at state level by INEPAC, provisionally listed on 19 June 1985. The federal listing by IPHAN covers the statue, not the railway.

Timetables and tickets for the Corcovado rack railway are published by the concessionaire, Trem do Corcovado.

More: Rio de Janeiro news in English, every day from The Rio Times.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did the Corcovado railway open?

Dom Pedro II inaugurated the first section on 9 October 1884. The full line to the summit opened on 18 July 1885.

Is it older than Christ the Redeemer?

Yes, by forty-seven years. The statue was inaugurated on 12 October 1931, and the train hauled its components up the mountain from 1926.

What is unusual about it technically?

It runs on three-phase alternating current using two overhead contact wires with the rails as the third phase, one of a very small number of such railways left. Rack railways themselves are common.

How steep is it?

A maximum gradient of 30 percent over 3,824 metres, gaining around 700 metres of altitude. It is the steepest railway in Brazil.

Who operates it and what does it cost?

The Esfeco consortium with Cataratas do Iguaçu, trading as Trem do Corcovado, under a concession running to November 2032. Adult tickets are R$134.

Sources: CREA-RJ, Diário do Rio, Agência Brasil, ANPTrilhos, Ipatrimonio, ICMBio, Trem do Corcovado.