Trolley Thursday 2/10/22 - The Panama Tramways

If one talks about the country of Panama (and its identically named City of Panama), most conversations stop at the giant canal built through gunboat diplomacy by 1914. However, the history of Panama does go on beyond the giant Canal, as the city had famously been sacked by privateer Henry Morgan in 1671 and reestablished a distance away by 1673. With the new Panama eventually came a new streetcar system that, like the Canal as its contemporary, continued to be a hotbed of constant reorganization, interruption, and commercial importance to the slender isthmus. On today's Trolley Thursday, we look at how electric streetcars built up Panama and what came after, if anything came after.

   

A Microcosm of Imperialism

Two early UETC Siemens cars meet along Avenida Central
in Panama City, 1893.
(Allen Morrison)

    At the time its streetcar story began, Panama was part of the country of Colombia, instead of an independent isthmus. Unlike most street railways in Mexico, Panama's endeavors began outside of the country. This was due to the failure of a May 16, 1889 joint venture between Bogotá's Ministry of Public Works and a local company in another part of Colombia. Intending to build Panama City's first streetcar line, the failure of this contract allowed foreign investments to invade and snatch it up. Formed in London, England on October 22, 1892, the United Electric Tramways Company (UETC) used their own European capital not only to complete the line but also to bring in European influence as the first electric cars and the powerhouses were developed and built by Siemens Brothers, a division of Siemens of Germany. The first line, down Avenida Central, opened to service on October 1, 1893, and was among the first non-horsecar lines to begin running in Central America. 

This view shows the odd operations and cars of the UETC, with their
offset bow collectors and left-hand running on all passing track. 
(Allen Morrison)

    Despite being extensively photographed upon opening, the line was poorly documented, so information like track gauge and operating voltages have been lost to time. What can be examined though is Siemens' use of offset "bow collector" trolley poles, remarkably different from the company's usual center-mounted and double-legged poles.  Enabling the success of the UETC were the early French attempts to build a Panama canal led by French diplomat and developer Ferdinand de Lesseps. Unfortunately, God saw fit to strike Lesseps' hubristic attempt to build a sea-level canal by smiting his construction sites with yellow fever and malaria. Due to the failure and subsequent winding-down of French construction, the local economy was sent into a tailspin; this was exacerbated by the "War of 1000 Days" of 1892, the Colombian civil war between its Liberal and Conservative parties. The end of this bloody affair led to Colombia's Conservative party concentrating power for several decades, while a major consequence of paying off war debts was the loss of the Department of Panama as an incorporated territory in 1903. By this time, the trolleys and the UETC investors were nowhere to be found.

The sinking of the Colombian ship "Lautaro" in Panama City, January 20, 1902.
(Carlos Chahin)

A Man, a Plan, a Canal: A Tramway

The new Panama Tramways being built on Avenida Central
at Plaza Santa Ana, 1911.
(Allen Morrison)

    After Panama's secession from Colombia in 1903, the United States (under President Theodore "T.R." Roosevelt) took over the French construction efforts in 1904 and, as a related issue, the modernization of the city of Panama. One concession granted to the city was the addition of a new transit system, enabling both local Panamanians and outside bridge workers to be able to move around the city. Despite this being the golden age of streetcar development, the new government contract on October 29, 1906, came and went with little fanfare and more failure to meet the contracted demands. Eventually, the contract was bought by an agent of the United Fruit Company (they of the "banana republics") and registered in New Jersey, USA, as the Panama Tramways Company (PTCo) on November 9, 1911. Out were the British and German influences and in were the Americans as construction began to build and rebuild Panama's street railways by 1912.

The PTCo Carbarn at Avenida Norte, circa 1913-1914,
with American flags festooned upon the otherwise-Panamanian building.
(Allen Morrison)

An unidentified Brill Car turns onto Calle C on the
Balboa Line, heading west for the Canal Zone.
(Unknown Author)

Among the developments provided to the Panama cars were a defined gauge of 42 inches (or "Cape Gauge" to the rest of the world, unless you're a cable car) and adopting them to Panama's own style of left-hand running (bucking the trend for right-hand running all over Central America). The new line opened on August 1, 1913, and served dutifully as canal workers and Panamanian locals rubbed shoulders on the tiny single-truck streetcars on their way to work. By the next year, with the opening of the Panama Canal, the company was reorganized as the Panama Electric Company (PECo). Its more general-sounding name allowed the PECo to be purchased by the holding company Electric Bond & Share Company (Ebasco) in 1917, where it became part of the General Electric utility empire. This shift in ownership coincided with a general strike in October 1916 that involved the city's sanitation workers and its motormen, but contemporary reports show that business was not interrupted around this time.

Notable Streetcars and Operations

A builder's photo of Brill Car No. 27 for the Panama Tramways Company.
Note the other trolley pole is cut out to facilitate a clean catalog picture.
(J.G. Brill Company)

The very basic, barebones interior of the Brill cars,
with spring-loaded standee handles and wicker-backed
"walk-over" seats.
(J.G. Brill Company)

    Upon the opening of the new PTCo in 1913, service was provided by steel-underframe single-truck streetcars built by the Federal Storage Battery Company of Silver Lake, New Jersey, and the J.G. Brill Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Interestingly, though the former company had an enticing name, the only battery-operated streetcar line planned was to have been in the city of Colón (across the Canal) by 1910; however, despite 3 kilometers of track having been built, the line never opened.) The cars provided by Brill for Panama City were stout proto-Birney cars, riding on bouncy single-truck frames and featuring doors on both sides to facilitate faster boarding. Their tall windows and roofs and slender, narrow-gauge proportions made them appear quite ungainly, but that did not stop the now-PECo from rostering 22 of these cars by 1917, Nos. 1-24 (if you ask me, something got mixed up somewhere and maybe two of them got scrapped). For passenger comforts, they remained stark and economical with only wicker-straw seats. They remained the only cars rostered by the Panamanian streetcar system until their demise in 1941, and none unfortunately survive.

A complete map of the Panamanian streetcar system by the 1920s.
A more legible version can be found here.
(Allen Morrison)

Car No. 24 glides along the mainline on Avenida Central,
en route to the Palacio past Plaza Santa Ana, circa 1920s.
(Allen Morrison)

    Despite their diminutive size, these cars racked up quite the trackage as each line resembled countryside interurbans more than urban streetcars. Most activity was centered around two loop-lines in the city, one large one taking up Calle 23 and Plaza 5 de Mayo to the north with a branch to Ancon and a smaller one connecting to Plaza de Santa Ana and Avenida Norte to the south. The longest branching line ran an estimated 7 kilometers north to "Sabanas" (what is now around Parque Omar) and about 4 kilometers west to the canal railroad yards at Balboa. The last branching lines visited the communities of Bella Vista and Santo Tomás, along with the governmental center of the Palacio, now San Felipe. Popular destinations included the Bullring in Sabanas on Calle 62 and the ship-watching vantage points of the Balboa terminal. By 1924, the total trackage run by the streetcars was a combined 17.06 kilometers, including a new grade crossing at Calle 23 Este. With its long reach across the city's borders, the line was indispensable to those growing up in Panama City, with the motormen said to look severe but "friendly and helpful" in their little ties and "kepi" style hats.

End of the Line

Car No. 26 is robbed of passengers in this 1930s scene as it
is headed for Sabanas, while a guilty Jitney bus glides past,
showing its lack of right-hand boarding.
(Allen Morrison)

    All this time, the US and Panama City remained a little at odds with each other, as the line out to Balboa crossed into the US-controlled "Canal Zone" and remained out of local control for several decades after. Denied the ability to use the shipping ports of the Canal Zone to subsidize and improve their streetcar system, Ebasco suffered as cars and jitney buses began taking their business. The 1935 Public Utilities Holding Act then forced General Electric to spin off the Panamanian streetcars and return them to local government control. It is unknown whether a worker cooperative spun off from this new administration. By 1941, with the government now bearing the losses of the streetcar system, both it and the company agreed to nullify the contract and the last car ran on the streets of Panama on Saturday, May 31. And then, it was all over.

The new Panama Metro glides over street traffic.
(International Railway Journal)

    However, there is a happy ending to this story. After the US ceded control of the Canal Zone to Panama City in the 1970s, the local government began developing studies on a new metro line through the city. After many dead-end studies, they finally committed to a brand-new transit system in 2010, dubbed the Panama Metro. Construction offers were made from Brazil and Taiwan, but the line was eventually developed by the Spanish Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC), who built Line 1 from December 2010 to April 5, 2014. Line 1 ran north-to-south from San Isidro to the airport at Albrook, spanning 13.7 kilometers over fourteen stations (stopping short of the original southern terminal of "Balboa"). Line 2 opened on April 25, 2019, extending out from San Miguelito Junction 23.1 miles north to Nuevo Tocumen, a suburb on Panama's outer eastern reaches. Extensions are planned for both lines, including a new in-between station on Line 1, and planned numbered lines including a monorail (3), metro (4 and 5), and even tram lines (6, 7, 8). 

A current map of the Panama Metro's Lines 1 and 2.
(Flappiefh)

   

Thank you for reading today's Trolley post, and watch your step as you alight on the platform. My resources today included Allen Morrison's writeup of the Panamanian streetcar system, a personal recollection by Panama local Louie Celerier, the Panama Metro System, and the photo credits in each caption. The trolley gifs in our posts are made by myself and can be found under “Motorman Reymond’s Railroad Gif Carhouse”. On Tuesday, we cross the Panama Canal and look at the streetcars of Curitiba, Brazil! For now, you can follow myself or my editor on Twitter, buy a shirt or sticker from our Redbubble stand, or purchase my editor's self-developed board game! It's like Ticket to Ride, but cooler! (and you get to support him through it!) Until next time, ride safe!