Trains and the war

the railroads in Bahia During World War II

Abstract

The article analyzes the trajectory of the two most important railroads in Bahia, namely the Viação Férrea Federal Leste Brasileiro and the Estrada de Ferro Nazaré, in the period between 1935 and 1948. We seek to understand the role World War II had for their decline. The study of both railroads shows that they had longstanding structural problems, which increased during the war, making it impossible to acquire materials and equipment from abroad, and, at the same time, difficult to obtain federal and state credits. To old problems, new ones emerged and became even worse due to not only the war but also the establishment of a public policy in the mid-40s focused on highways and cars. This led, among other things, to companies having extremely high deficits and thus compromising their economic feasibility, resulting, some years later, in the removal of many sections of the first railroad and the total abandonment of the second.