Only in Brazil...

The gondolas are used when the company needs to switch or lead heavy weights, like a entire train or locomotives. The gondola is always full of ballast or old rails.

Very bizzare!

I would not understand why a company would want to invest so much funding into narrow gauge and regular gauge as well. That means more material must be kept on hand for repairs.

We have meter gauge and broad gage companies here. It is difficult to change this scenery in the near future, since they have a large rail network. FCA has more than 8,000 km long of narrow gage lines, and MRS about 4,000 km. U.S also had this problem in the past. Brazilian government did a law some years ago that forces all new railroad will be built in broad gauge. Where narrow and broad gauge have connection, we have special cars or locomotives that allow to do the yard switching in the two gauge lines.