Railroad Overview

Panama Canal Railway Company is the only railway operator in the country.  The railroad is side connected at the Pacific with the port of Balboa allowing expedite loading and discharging of containers bound to the Atlantic terminals of Cristobal and MIT.  The terminal of Cristobal allows the embarking of passengers and loading of containers with an in-dock service. The MIT terminal is next to the Logistics Park, 500 meters from the port of Manzanillo and 2,000 meters from the port of CCT.

In average, 2,000 containers are transferred per day in both directions for a yearly throughput of about 650,000 units. The trip is about 76 kilometers and 1 hour and 15 minutes traveling time between terminals with typically 10 trips daily in each direction for double stack trains based on container demand. A set of 6 passenger cars are used during weekdays under fixed schedule mainly for tourists and executives travelling from Panama City to Colon Free Zone. The maximum handling capacity of the service has been estimated in 2,000,000 containers per year.