Left photo: G.E. V8 locomotive #6381, built in 1946, near Bauru station. This is exactly same machine that can be seen in the color photo in the page of Companhia Paulista (C.P.E.F. 381/FEPASA 6381).

Right photo: The same locomotive heading a train departing from Bauru to São Paulo. Note the complete lack of uniformity of the passenger cars... and compare this composition to the 1965 black and white photo at the Jaú station that can be seen in the Companhia Paulista page... Both photos are courtesy of Ricardo Frontera and were taken in July 1998.

The locomotive in the photos above has the last FEPASA livery - white with black and red stripes. These are the colours of the São Paulo state flag. In 1995, FEPASA administration decided to began the deactivation of electrified lines, specially in the former Paulista routes. In fact, the electrical equipment at those lines is too old, as it was installed between the twenties and the fifties. It was not submitted to any extensive revamping, specially during the last forty years, so it is really becaming increasingly obsolete. However, FEPASA's decision was reversed in 1996 and some of these "condemned" locomotives received the new FEPASA livery, as shown in the photos above. They worked up to the end of 1998, when FEPASA was privatized and became FERROBAN. The electrification system of all FEPASA lines was deactivated in the beginning of 1999. And according to the lattest rumours, the Evil Empire finally won this battle and electrification is being scrapped. Let's hope that we will not face a new Oil Crisis like those ones from the seventies... or we will have to fuel our remaining locomotives with alcohol. Well, speaking seriously, FEPASA carried out some experiments using methanol as fuel in a diesel-electric locomotive during the early eighties.