The Panama Canal Railroad

Pre Train Trip Musings

Before we came to Panama, I read McCullough's amazing history, The Path Between the Seas, aloud to my husband.  One of the small scenes in the book that struck me was how much early travelers enjoyed the scenic railway trip across the Isthmus; the railroad crossed Panama long, long before the canal did.  It was an important route for people heading to California during the Gold Rush, and it played a crucial role in the story of Panama's separation from Colombia.

So, riding the train across Panama myself has been one of my "To Do" list items, right up there with transiting the country by boat.  Getting a train ticket was oddly harder to do; the ticket site seemed to go dark right after October (maybe because November is the month of almost daily National Holidays here). Even when the site came up again, tickets were only available a week or so in advance.

Hence, there was great Jubilation on Christmas Eve when my husband saw that tickets were available.  (I was less immediately jubilated, because I was on a zoom call with my kids and grandkids, reciting "Twas the Night before Christmas", but I switched focus long enough to green-light the $44/person ticket purchase, and then returned to my kids.  And then I Jubilated the possession of cross-country train tickets later that evening, when I had fewer distractions).

The trip itself

We showed up in an Uber at the train station a little more than a half-hour before departure time; we could have walked, but sprung for an Uber because of *course* it was raining this morning.  Panama!  

The line to get in was outside the building, under an overhang but next to some very noisy, idling tour buses. 

It was highly disordered; fortunately, the line started moving about 5 minutes after we arrived (a half-hour before the scheduled departure time), and we filed into the train station to be greeted by employees in Christmas-themed headbands (called "Vinchas" in Panama). 

 We had to wait in another line inside the station, and then got walked down the platform by the attendants and placed quite determinedly by an employee who'd bark out, "Two?  Here!  Four? Here!"

The attendants marching us to our train car.

The train car is beautiful inside: dark elegant woodwork, leather (or faux leather) seats, domed ceilings.

The car loaded quickly, and my husband immediately found a couple from Arizona to talk to.  

Five minutes after the scheduled starting time, a vincha-wearing employee made an announcement via microphone, in Spanish only, telling us location of the bathrooms (please put toilet paper in the basket, not the toilet), explaining there would be free coffee service, and that other stuff (juice, snacks, booze) can be bought.  In Colon, we won't get down.  There might be ??? box lunches, not sure.

Then the train started out.

The forest is so lush and full.  It is amazing to watch, and hard to photograph.

The (car) road to the Pedro Miguel locks goes up and down -- Panama is hilly!  But the train follows a constant grade.  One time, we went through a tunnel; when we did, neither the tunnel nor the train car was lit, so we were tootling along in pitch blackness for a while!   Other times, we're above the road, looking down at the cars.

Passing the Mira Flores lake.

Noon: we head through the Galliard Cut, and then along a land bridge through Lake Gatun.

The sky is clearing!

A tug on the canal.

An hour after we'd started, we neared the Colon locks, and also Colon.  That city is rundown and (according to Panamanians I've talked to) scary with crime, which is part of why we didn't get out here.

Entering Colon.

At the turnaround point, the train stopped and each passenger got a snack box.  

Cute Snack Box!

The box had "Did you know?" facts on the back including, "Even though built by American engineers, the Panama Railroad used a non-standard gauge of five feet and was unchanged until the railroad was completely rebuilt in 2001 as the Panama Canal Railway Company."

Inside the box, food wrapped in trash. 
(I mean, not trash right now, but what will shortly become trash).

That date--2001--when the railroad gauge changed means that the transformation happened once the U.S. handed the Canal and surrounding area back to the country of Panama.  The new gauge allows them to haul container cars across the country via rail, and also to use more traditional steam engines.

Container cars sitting in the ports, near the railway,
ready to be hauled or loaded onto ships.

An hour and half into this adventure, without any fanfare or announcements, we head back the other direction.  

The trip back (south) is much the same as the trip out (north), except that as we near Panama City, the Vincha-clad attendants sing us a traditional Panamanian song, about the "tambor de alegría" (drum of happiness.  Here's a 56-second video with that same song, if you're curious. They also sing "Feliz Navidad (I want to wish you a Merry Christmas)".

And then we arrived back in Panama City, and disembarked.  

Reflections on the Train Trip

At $44, the 44-mile out and 44-mile back trip cost about 50¢/mile, if you think of it as miles spent touring.  (If you think of it as transportation, then because we got out at the same place we got, on, it was $44 to go 0 miles, which works out to $∞/mile.)

The chairs were comfortable, and the train cars were lovely to look at.  They remind me of the historic Strassburg railroad cars; maybe they're of an era with the trains near my home city.  

I was struck by the complete absence of tour-guide-like announcements.  Clearly, all the people this train were sightseeing, and yet there were no explanations at all of what was out our windows.  The attendants made announcements at the beginning and end of the trip, but all was silence (well, except for the short singing interlude) in between.  If I hadn't traveled the route before, I wouldn't have known the landmarks we were passing or their significance.  Would I recommend this ride for other tourists? If you like being on trains and looking out windows, sure, I guess; but if you're hoping to make sense of a new-to-you landscape, not so much.

I also realized how much the views must have changed since the time of the train trips described in McCullough's book.  Those trains crossed the isthmus back in the day that the mighty Chagres river still roared through canyons, overflowing its banks in the times of great rains and leaving deep ravines between the hills during dryer times.  The views on such trains must have included amazing vistas down into valleys and ravines, as well as moments of being dwarfed by the high hills rising above the tracks in other places.  Now, the train runs past the level lakes that were formed by damming the river, and the views are of serene waterfront, or encroaching (but very level) forest.  

Finally, my husband just realized that our canal transit and train rides are the first time he's ever crossed a continent at ground level.  I drove all the way across the United States (and back) in 1995-1996; I took the train cross-country last January.  But my husband has only ever made that crossing in a plane.  So our Panama crossings these past two weeks have been a kind of a milestone for him, all the easier because of the smaller number of miles between oceans here!