There is a railway in Panama that doesn't get nearly as much attention as the canal running beside it.
That is a little strange when you consider what it actually is.
The Panama Canal Railway crosses the Isthmus between Panama City and Colón, linking the Pacific and Caribbean sides of the country. Its history reaches back to the 1850s, when Panama was still part of Colombia and the world was becoming obsessed with an entirely different kind of treasure: California gold.
Long before giant ships began passing through the Panama Canal, people were already discovering that Panama's greatest geographical advantage was its narrow waist.
And the railway was the first modern machine to exploit it.
The Railway Came Before the Canal
The Panama Canal is famous for connecting two oceans, but the idea of moving people and goods across Panama by land is much older.
After gold was discovered in California in 1848, thousands of people began rushing westward. Travelling all the way around South America was an enormous undertaking, while crossing North America was still difficult and dangerous. Panama offered an extraordinary shortcut.
The solution was a railway.
Construction began in the early 1850s, and the Panama Railway officially opened in 1855. The Panama Canal Authority describes it as the first railway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the American continent and the first transcontinental railway in the world.
Think about that for a moment.
The Panama Canal didn't invent the idea of crossing Panama.
The railway did it almost sixty years earlier.
The Journey Was Once an Adventure
Today, travelling from Panama City toward Colón can feel like a relatively straightforward journey.
In the nineteenth century, it was a completely different story.
Before the railway, crossing the Isthmus could involve mud, rivers, jungle, heat, insects, disease and treacherous terrain. Panama's rainy season could turn the landscape into an enormous obstacle course.
The railway transformed that.
Suddenly, passengers could travel across the Isthmus in a matter of hours rather than enduring a much slower and more dangerous overland journey. The route became one of the most strategically important transportation links in the world.
And the demand was enormous.
The California Gold Rush essentially turned Panama into a global transit corridor.
And It Wasn't Cheap
The Panama Railway quickly developed a reputation for being extraordinarily expensive.
The Panama Canal Authority notes that a one way passenger ticket between Panama City and Colón cost $25 in gold coin, an extraordinary amount of money at the time. It describes the railway as both the world's first transcontinental railway and the most expensive railway in the world.
Why so expensive?
Because building a railway across Panama was anything but easy.
Engineers had to deal with mountains, swamps, rivers, tropical vegetation and diseases that were poorly understood at the time.
The railway wasn't simply being constructed across empty countryside.
It was being forced through one of the most difficult tropical environments on Earth.
The Jungle Wasn't the Only Enemy
Disease was one of the great killers in nineteenth century Panama.
Yellow fever and malaria devastated workers and travellers.
The Panama Canal Authority's historical records describe the horrific conditions encountered by people crossing the Isthmus during the rainy season, with disease becoming a major obstacle to transportation and construction projects.
This is an important part of the railway story because it foreshadowed what would happen decades later during the construction of the canal.
The same geography that made Panama valuable also made building infrastructure extraordinarily difficult.
Panama was a shortcut between oceans.
But it was a shortcut through jungle.
Then Came the Canal Builders
When the French began their attempt to construct a canal across Panama in the late nineteenth century, they quickly realized how important the railway was.
The French acquired control of the Panama Railway in 1881.
The Canal Authority's historical account notes that the French paid more than $25 million for control of the railway, an enormous amount at the time.
The reason was obvious.
A railway could move people, equipment and excavated material through terrain that would otherwise be extraordinarily difficult to cross.
The railway became an important piece of the enormous logistical puzzle surrounding canal construction.
The Railway and the Canal Became Partners
When the United States took over the canal project in 1904, the railway became even more important.
Imagine the scale of the operation.
Thousands upon thousands of workers.
Massive excavation.
Enormous quantities of rock and earth.
Construction equipment.
Food.
Tools.
Medical supplies.
Building materials.
Everything had to move.
The railway became part of the machinery that allowed the canal project to function.
And there is a wonderfully symbolic relationship between the two.
The railway conquered Panama overland.
The canal eventually conquered it by water.
One was the technological solution of the nineteenth century.
The other became the technological obsession of the early twentieth.
The Railway Watched the Canal Become Reality
There is even a remarkable detail in the history of the canal's opening.
The first official transit of the Panama Canal took place on August 15, 1914, when the SS Ancon passed through the waterway.
The Canal Authority's historical account notes that Colonel George Goethals, the man who oversaw the American canal construction effort, followed the inaugural transit's progress from shore by railroad.
It's almost poetic.
The railway that had helped make the Isthmus crossable was still there when the canal finally achieved what generations of engineers had dreamed about.
The Railway Didn't Disappear
This is perhaps the part that surprises many travellers.
The Panama Railway isn't merely a museum piece.
It remains an operational railway.
Modern Panama Canal Railway operations provide passenger and freight transportation between Panama City and Colón. A recent Panama Canal Authority document describes the railway as the only operational railroad in Panama providing passenger and freight service.
And the modern railway generally follows the historic corridor of the original route.
So when you ride the train today, you're not simply riding a tourist attraction constructed to imitate history.
You're travelling along a transportation corridor with a history stretching back more than 170 years.
The Modern Train Is a Completely Different Experience
Of course, don't expect to board a nineteenth century steam locomotive.
The modern passenger service is comfortable, air conditioned and designed for contemporary travellers.
But outside the windows, the landscape is still unmistakably Panama.
The train travels through the tropical environment surrounding the canal and Lake Gatún, passing through a landscape where enormous engineering projects coexist with jungle.
And that's what makes the journey particularly appealing.
You get to experience Panama from an unusual perspective.
Not from a bus.
Not from a boat.
Not from a hiking trail.
But from the same basic transportation corridor that helped transform the country into one of the world's most strategically important pieces of geography.
Look Out the Window
The temptation on a train journey is to sit back, stare at your phone and wait for the destination.
Don't.
The railway is an excellent reminder that Panama's geography is the entire reason the country became so important.
As the train moves through the landscape, you are crossing the narrow strip of land separating two enormous bodies of water.
You are travelling through the same general geographic corridor that attracted Spanish explorers, gold seekers, railway engineers, French canal builders and American engineers.
And somewhere beyond the vegetation and waterways is the Panama Canal itself.
The Railway Helped Make Panama a Global Crossroads
Panama's importance didn't begin with the canal.
For centuries, the country had been a transportation corridor.
The Spanish used the Isthmus to move precious metals from South America toward the Caribbean and Europe. Later, the California Gold Rush created a massive demand for rapid transisthmian transportation.
The railway accelerated that process dramatically.
It transformed Panama from a difficult land bridge into a modern transportation shortcut.
Then the canal took the concept to another level.
Instead of unloading cargo from ships, moving it across land and loading it onto another vessel, ships could eventually travel directly between the oceans.
The railway was essentially the first great modern proof that Panama's geography could be monetized on a global scale.
And Then the Canal Became Bigger Than the Railway
The canal eventually became the dominant symbol of Panama.
Today, the waterway stretches approximately 80 kilometres across the Isthmus and connects the Atlantic and Pacific through a system of locks and artificial lakes.
The railway, meanwhile, became a quieter piece of the transportation network.
But its importance never completely disappeared.
In fact, the railway and canal continue to coexist.
The railway provides another way of moving cargo and people across the Isthmus, while ships move through the canal.
And with Panama's role as a global logistics hub continuing to expand, that old railroad corridor still has relevance.
There Is Something Almost Romantic About It
There's something particularly appealing about the Panama Canal Railway for travellers.
The canal is enormous.
It's spectacular.
It's one of the greatest engineering achievements in history.
But the railway feels more intimate.
You're sitting inside a train watching Panama pass outside the window.
The jungle comes close.
Water appears through the vegetation.
Ships and canal infrastructure occasionally reveal themselves.
And beneath everything is the knowledge that people have been trying to cross this narrow piece of Panama for centuries.
You're not merely travelling from one city to another.
You're travelling through a piece of world transportation history.
A Railway Built Because the World Wanted Gold
Perhaps the strangest part of the entire story is that the railway wasn't originally built because Panama wanted to become a tourist destination or global logistics centre.
It was built because people wanted to get to California.
Gold created the demand.
Panama provided the shortcut.
Engineers built the railway.
The railway demonstrated the strategic importance of the Isthmus.
That encouraged larger ambitions.
Eventually came the French canal attempt.
Then the American canal project.
Then the modern Panama Canal.
And today, Panama sits at the centre of one of the world's most important transportation networks.
All of it can be traced, at least in part, to the realization that Panama is incredibly narrow in exactly the right place.
The Train Is a Forgotten Chapter of the Canal Story
Most visitors learn about the canal.
They learn about Gatún Lake.
They visit Miraflores or the new locks.
They watch enormous ships squeeze through engineering marvels.
But the railway is the missing chapter.
It explains how Panama became a transportation powerhouse before the canal existed.
It explains why engineers and businessmen became obsessed with the Isthmus.
It explains how people, equipment and goods could cross Panama long before ships could.
And it gives the traveller a different way of understanding the country.
The next time you see the Panama Canal, remember that another transportation revolution came first.
The railway crossed Panama before the ships ever could.
And more than a century and a half later, its tracks are still carrying people and cargo across the same extraordinary piece of land.