Tua is a typical country junction station where occasional bursts of frantic activity as trains pass & connections are made are separated by lengthy periods of peace & quiet. Here during one quiet midday period, domestic fowl scavange for food on the tracks.
Photo Tony Bowles

The Companhia Nacional de Caminhos de Ferro became the third narrow gauge railway operator in Portugal when it opened its line from Tua to Mirandela in 1887. Some 3 years later the company also opened the Dão line under another concession and finally in 1906 it opened the Tua line extension to Bragança.
Apart from the purchase of a single diesel locomotive in 1938 about which little is known, the CN relied on its fleet of 10 2-6-0Ts bought from Emil Kessler of Esslingen over a 20 year span, for the operation of Tua line services during the whole of its independent existence. Even under the CP these engines continued to power virtually all the non railcar traffic into the mid 1970s. Then for a 2 year period a batch of the former CF do Estado 0-4-4-0 mallet tanks made redundant by dieselisation in Porto were transferred & used to power most of the mixed trains. By 1979 these had been replaced by diesel locomotives but one of the Kesslers E114 was still regularly working a return trip a day between Mirandela & Bragança with the morning mixed at a mere 72 years of age. The Mirandela men liked their Kesslers.

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