Qualla: Bauru Station (NOB)

Bauru Station (NOB): Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rafael Kage from Bauru/sp , Brazil, CC BY 2.0. The last passenger train pulled out of Bauru on March 14, 2001 - a Tuesday, unremarkable except that a century of rail history stopped with it. For most of the twentieth century, this station was not a destination. It was a beginning. The Estrada de Ferro Noroeste do Brasil, the Northwest Railroad, started here and ran west toward Cuiaba, toward Corumba, toward the Bolivian border - more than 1,600 kilometers of track pushed through cerrado and pantanal to connect coastal Sao Paulo to the Brazilian interior. Every passenger headed to those places passed through the doors of the Bauru station. Belgian and French financiers funded the line. Brazilian engineers surveyed it. The building that still stands on the site was inaugurated on September 1, 1939, and when it opened, it was one of the three largest railroad junctions in Brazil.

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Image: Rafael Kage from Bauru/sp , Brazil | CC BY 2.0

Bauru Station (NOB): The Wooden Beginning

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jose Reynaldo da Fonseca, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Companhia Estrada de Ferro Noroeste do Brasil was created in 1904 with an ambitious mandate: link the Sao Paulo rail network to Cuiaba, capital of distant Mato Grosso. The financing came from Belgian, French, and Brazilian sources, and the line began construction in November ...

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Image: Jose Reynaldo da Fonseca | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bauru Station (NOB): The Long Path to a New Station

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Estrada de Ferro Noroeste do Brasil, Public domain. By the 1930s the wooden building was overwhelmed. Plans for a replacement began in 1933, when the Sao Paulo government proposed leasing the Noroeste and building a single new terminal for all three railways. The proposal was shelved, but the idea of a new Noroeste station persist...

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Image: Estrada de Ferro Noroeste do Brasil | Public domain

Bauru Station (NOB): The Busy Decades

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Diretório Regional de Geografia no Estado de São Paulo, Public domain. By 1959, the station received 28 daily trains - sixteen from the Companhia Paulista, eight from the Noroeste (which had recently been absorbed into the Federal Railway Network), and four from the Sorocabana. It was a functional, working junction, not a monument. Suitcases and fre...

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Image: Diretório Regional de Geografia no Estado de São Paulo | Public domain

Bauru Station (NOB): Closure and Afterlife

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The Federal Railway Network deactivated the Bauru-Corumba train in January 1993. Only Fepasa passenger services remained, connecting Bauru to destinations within Sao Paulo state. Then, on March 14, 2001, the successor concessionaire Ferroban shut down the last passenger services....

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain