Trains at the Panama canal

Interesting shots, Hokie.  We were down there about 15 years ago and never had the chance to see the Panama RR.  One question:  Is the new, widened canal now open for business?   The advent of this development will affect U. S. railroading.  Western roads can expect to loose a fair amount of land-bridge traffic whereas Eastern roads serving seaports should expect to see increases in freight.

Paul Fischer

Yes the new locks and in some areas a whole new canal opened a few months ago (lake gatun is shared but Miraflores has a parallel canal). I went to AguaClara, near Colon on the Atlantic coast, which I think is the only public access to the new locks. Sad to say, tugs replace the locos. Here are shots of one of the big ones going through. 

Great pics.  KCS owns the Panama Canal RR. I recent read that many shippers find it more economical to not send a ship through the canal...but to train the containers across. Still will need a lot of trains to carry containers from Western and Eastern Ports to the center of the USA.  Isnt it still slower by boat through the canal than 70mph train across USA?

Nice pictures, thanks for posting them for us to see. Per Mike W's post above, I have heard the fees are substantial to use the Panama canal and may be even more now that the expansion has been completed. However, I have never heard how much the fees really are? Did you happen to hear anything about the fees while you were there?

With the older locks, there were two sets.  Usually, one set ran EB, the other WB.  But with the new, bigger locks, there is only ONE lock at each ocean.  You can run larger ships, but can only run one way at a time.

Also. to pay for the new locks, did the ship tolls go up?

I asked a local and he said tolls are based on cargo value. Another factor is whether you pay to jump the line. Apparently there is a few day wait most of the time. He estimated the big container ship in the new canal was $700,000.  I have no idea on how to verify this. Interesting to Google?

Trains magazine did a nice article on this railroad about two years ago.

Very nice and informative photos.  Congrats on checking off a bucket list item, Hokie 71.  Those cog-driven units interested me in particular.

Tomlinson Run Railroad

That's an impressive amount for just one ship!  Of course they do have a LOT of containers on one of those that could probably be worth a very large amount. I wonder how those fees figure in to the cost of our O gauge trains? I suppose it's probably not a whole lot when you consider how many trains they may have in a container board and all the other containers from other shippers. Just sounds like a lot when first hearing the amount of the fees.

I did a little googling and calculating... The largest container ships can hold up to around 18,000 - 20 foot containers and I guessed at 15,000 for the low end. That only amounts to somewhere between $39 and $47 or so per container. I guess that doesn't add too much to our train costs, not like it appears when first seeing the fees anyway.