Excursion Trains
Tourism at work sites during the Construction Era is an endlessly fascinating topic, so for our final day of Panama Railroad posts we are featuring some wonderful images of excursion trains. The first is an official government photograph from 1910 and the second is an undated photo postcard showing a closer view of an excursion train loaded with passengers.
These images offer a perfect opportunity to share both descriptive information about the images and stories about your own experiences with railroad travel or even general tourism in the Canal Zone. We hope you have enjoyed this series of posts on the Panama Railroad!
Celebrating 160 Years of the Panama Railroad (1855-2015)
3 Comments
Robert Dryja
The closed passenger cars in the top picture look similar to the passenger cars of my youth. I road the train several times in the late 1950’s to early 1960’s. The seats were make of wood and wicker with fine wood paneling surrounded the windows. Oil burning lamps were mounted in row along the ceiling. My sense was that the passenger cars went back to canal construction days and had been maintained in good condition for half a century. I had a tangible sense of connecting to history, even as a teenager. The train would pass through jungle and be adjacent to Gatun Lake after leaving the Gamboa train station on the way to Christobal. This gave a sense of entering the world of nature as it existed at the time that the canal was being construction. Locomotive 299 was on display at the Balboa train station and also gave a sense of canal construction history.
Lance Terrell
The wooden passenger cars of the 50’s and 60’s were made by CZ employees at the PRR car repair shop (Bldg 7) at the Balboa Industrial Bureau (shops). They were built in either the 20’s or 30’s. They were painted maroon before World War II, but after the war broke out they were painted Pullman green in 1942. The lamps at the ceilings of the cars were kerosene burning, not oil. They were converted to electricity in the 1950’s.
Lyla Sky
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