Currently it takes 12 hours or so for a ship to go through the canal, and sometimes there is a several-day wait before the trip can start because of heavy traffic. Whether this proposal to transfer cargo from ship to train to ship is economical, and whether the money can be found to rebuild the railroad, are very uncertain matters.
Security is a concern in most third world countries, and Panama is no exception. Grocery stores, drug stores, hotels, restaurants, and most businesses have armed private security guards present. Many larger intersections have heavily armed military teams on duty. The Panamanian version of the light bulb joke is that it takes three Panamanians to change a light bulb: one to read the manual, one to turn the bulb, and one to provide security. I generally felt reasonably safe walking around during the day near my hotel, but there are areas of the city everyone warned me about. The security situation became very personal one day when Ted and I were walking back to our hotel, which was about a mile away. It was during the afternoon rush hour, and a gang of four teenagers targeted us. They came single file down the sidewalk toward us, and as they passed I turned with my arms out and ready to resist if necessary. Then I made the mistake of continuing to walk a few feet until I heard Ted call out, and turned to see him and the largest of the youths on the ground. I let out a shout, reached for my knife, and ran toward them, which scared the three youngest away. The one who had hold of Ted jumped up and threatened me with a board he had been carrying, but when he realized his companions had fled, he backed off. Ted got up and we ran into the stopped rush hour traffic and started seeking a car to enter. At that point the youths had regrouped and were chasing us. Then the driver of an open car fired a couple of shots, and that sent the gang in the direction away from us. It wasn't clear whether he had fired at them, or into the air, since his gun was aimed up when I saw him. I gave him a thumbs up just as another motorist took us into his car and then drove us to our hotel. I was not hurt, but Ted had a couple of scratches from the scuffling and rolling on the street. Thereafter I usually carried my knife in my hand instead of my pocket when we were walking in risky areas.
(Additional commentary about the street fight, added after many requests for amplification: On overseas trips I carry a small pocket knife, with a locking blade, in a slender pocket on my right upper leg. As I ran toward the guy I was reaching for it, but before I got it out he had let go of Ted and was threatening me with a board until he looked around and saw that the other three had left him behind. I don't know if he even saw the knife, although it should have been clear to him that I was extracting something. Then he turned and ran, and I helped Ted get up and we ran in the opposite direction, and started trying car doors. The first one I tried was locked. The next car door was unlocked, but jammed with people. The third car rear door was locked, but the front window was down and I reached in and unlocked the rear door and started to shove Ted in. Then I heard the shots, and that distracted me, since I had been watching the thugs as they were now running toward us. The shots caused them to change direction. The guy with the gun motioned for us to get in his car, and the guy behind the car were I was standing with the door open called and urged us to get in his car. Since the guy whose car I had started to invade did not look happy, and since the threat had decreased, I decided to go to the car behind where we were being welcomed. I was not anxious to get in the car with the guy with the gun, since, although I was thankful for his actions, I was not sure what the final outcome of that might be.)
On another occasion, hiking along the track in light jungle, I surprised a small dog which ran away yelping loudly. That noise alerted a pack of dogs up a nearby hill, and I was afraid they were loose and would attack me, so I kept moving quickly down the track. This was the scariest event of the trip for me. On other occasions I have made unauthorized intrusions into areas where I was attacked by trained guard dogs; other times I have surprised packs of wild dogs, and been attacked by them. Watching over my shoulder as I hurried along the track, and listening closely, it was soon apparent that the dogs were not free to chase me. I did, however, observe a man with a gun running in my direction. I continued quickly on my way, and a few days later decided the man's intentions were probably not hostile toward me. I now believe he was only trying to protect his dog from a puma. These leopard sized wild cats are a real threat to domestic animals in remote areas.
The Panama Canal Railroad was part of the package the U.S. acquired when it took over (from the French) the project to build a canal between the oceans in the early 1900s. As mentioned above, the railroad played an essential role in making the canal possible, and then declined in economic importance as ships were used to move people and cargo across the isthmus. In 1979, when the U.S. agreed to give the canal to the government of Panama twenty years later, in 1999, it did not wait to unload the unprofitable railroad, and since that time the railroad has been a Panamanian government operation. It was not maintained very well, and as mentioned before, has not operated for many years.
Since the railroad and the canal were under one ownership when the canal was built, the railroad equipment associated with the canal locks was also built to the five-foot gauge, and there were interchange tracks so that canal locomotives could move along the railroad between the three sets of locks if necessary. The canal locomotives, popularly called 'mules,' were used earlier to pull ships into the locks, and to control their movement while in the locks. Today most ships enter the locks under their own power, but the mules (generally 4-6 for large ships) are still attached, and used to guide and brake the ships' forward movement if necessary. Sometimes the mules tow smaller vessels into or out of the locks.
I was allowed to visit the locomotive repair facilities at the canal, and to ride in one of the mules. I was able to climb on and under a mule and inspect its several unusual features. They move slowly, having a top speed of less than five miles per hour. On the side next to the water they have two very-heavy-duty winches which contain cables which are attached to the ships, and can be reeled in or played out to allow the ship being escorted to move sideways in the lock. The mules have a pair of horizontal wheels and a vertical geared drive wheel mounted on the underside of the chassis. The geared drive wheel (which engages a rack between the running rails) allows the mules to climb up and go down 45 degree slopes to accommodate the different water levels as the locks fill and empty. The pair of horizontal wheels keeps the mule stable and vertical thus preventing ships from moving sideways and pulling the mule over. The mules are powered electrically, and the power is collected by brushes that fit into a slot running along side the track, on the side opposite the adjacent lock. With the normal running rails, the slot in the ground from which electricity is drawn, and the rack in the center which engages the geared drive, the locks railroad tracks are unique in my experience. In addition to about 80 such locomotives, there are a dozen or more self-propelled cranes having the same drive mechanism as the mules, and which are used for various lifting and construction projects on the locks. There is also a small turntable at each lock which allows the mules to be turned so they can be used on both sides of a lock.
After tracking the ghost of a railroad along the tracks across the isthmus, and exploring the railroad aspects of the canal operation, I was able to locate more railroads to visit. When I first started researching my Panama trip I heard rumors that there might still be some rail activity on the banana plantations along the border with Costa Rica. After receiving some positive reports about this, I took an hour's flight to make a first-hand inspection. I was well rewarded, finding an operating narrow (36' between the rails) gauge railroad, with 16 diesel locomotives, frequent freight service, and even a scheduled passenger train. The primary purpose of this railroad is to move box cars loaded with bananas from the packing sheds in the fields to a dock where ocean-going ships pick up the bananas twice a week for delivery all over the world. Like a branching tree, there is a network of short lines with many sidings going to the various banana plantations, all clustered in an area about 15 miles by 30 miles, extending a bit into Costa Rica. A fleet of eight light diesel switch engines scurries about, dropping off empty cars at the packing sheds, and returning loaded ones to the marshaling area. From there one or more of six medium sized diesel engines hauls trains of 20 or more cars to the docks about 18 miles from the locomotive shops and yard facilities. Although bananas are consumed in a seasonal pattern, they are grown year around, so the railroad is constantly in operation. The passenger train hauls students from the center of the banana growing area to a school at the port, bringing them to school in the morning, taking them home for a long lunch break midday, and then returning them to the school until later in the afternoon when school is out. This service is free to the students, and other passengers may ride for a small fee.
A stroke of luck (accidentally meeting a key person) gave me the choice of touring the line by locomotive or speeder, either of which was put at my disposal. I selected the speeder, and thoroughly enjoyed viewing the mainline from such a vantage point. I was also given free access to the locomotive maintenance facility, and allowed to take pictures everywhere. Under the guise of being a German bridge engineer, there to inspect a railroad bridge that needed repairs, I was 'smuggled' out of Panama and into Costa Rica - and then back out of Costa Rica and back to Panama, so that I could see the tracks in Costa Rica. By the time I had completed my visit I was well known to the railroad employees. This familiarity enabled me, when I was ready to leave town, to 'hail a locomotive' that was traveling down the track next to the road I was walking along, much as one might hail a taxi in a city, to the airport. The locomotive crew stopped, picked me up, wanted to know where I wanted to go, and then took me there, dropping me off within a few hundred feet of the airport terminal.
While I was exploring this narrow gauge railroad I discovered another railroad - in fact, several very unusual railroads. Each of the banana plantations has its own railroad, using diesel locomotives to haul freight cars of bananas from the fields to the packing sheds. What is so unusual about these railroads is that they are overhead monorails. The locomotives (about 8 feet long) are diesel-hydraulic with an engine about the size of a lawn mower engine. The engineer rides on a separate car right behind the locomotive, and controls it by reaching forward to the knobs and cranks on the engine. The train is assembled, literally, in the field as 'hands' of bananas are carried on the shoulders of workers to the track. The first car is assembled from a set of trucks and a stick about 3' in diameter and 6' long, just tied together. The hand of bananas is suspended from the middle of this stick. Then, another stick is attached, another set of trucks added, and the next hand of bananas is attached. When 30 or 40 such cars of bananas are ready the engineer drives the train back to the packing shed. There are many switches and branch lines, so that the engineer must sometimes stop the train to align the overhead monorail for the desired route. Arriving at the packing shed, the train enters the yard, where there are several parallel tracks of cars awaiting unloading. |
