COVER N. 435 - BRASIL

Postmark: AC Central de S. Paulo SE/SPM 25.03.2024 

Posted on the 25th March; received on the 10th April 2024

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A large envelope with some nice stamps inside and some nice stamps outside... what's not to like?

Muito obrigado Luis! É sempre um prazer enorme receber  correspondência que sabemos ter aquele gostinho especial da língua que partilhamos. Um grande abraço! Resposta em breve.

I have written about it here before. Markets are one of those places that I cannot do without visiting when travelling abroad, for they tell a whole story about a country or at least a region in terms not only of the products being offered there to consumers, but also in the way things are organised, the shoppers, the sellers, the interactions between them both and with each other, the smells, the colours, the hustle and bustle, not forgetting the buildings themselves, often real works of functional art...

It is therefore not surprising at all that they should be considered for a philatelic issue, such as the one put out by Correios do Brasil on 07SEP2023, comprising five stamps of the same face value (2,45 Reais) dedicated to the Central Markets of Florianópolis, Fortaleza, Belo Horizonte, Goiânia and Manaus.

The first three I mentioned were used by Luis on this cover and I really like the beautiful watercolours of the illustrations.

From what I gathered on the internet, the Serra do Mar railway, operated by Serra Verde Express  is a 130 years old train service  between Curitiba and Morretes, that takes the traveller through  rather scenic expanses of preserved  Atlantic forest,  along a 110 km railway stretch, completed in about three hours.

 On 26JUL2016, Correios do Brasil issued a four 1º Porte de Carta tariff (Domestic, up to 20g)  se-tenant stamp set dedicated to the Serra do Mar railway. The photos on the stamps illustrate several landmarks of the railway such as the Murumbi range (on the stamp on the cover), the Carvalho and the Saint John Bridge viaducts, and the train compositions themselves. 

I believe that the A C initials in the postmark stand for Agência Central, although I still don't know what the SE/SPM initials refer to.