Dismantling

On January 22, 1998, Law 70 was signed, establishing the concession of the Panama Railroad to the Panama Canal Railway Company. Subsequently, on July 15, 1998, the Panama Railroad officially ceased operations under Panamanian state administration. The government began preparations to transfer the company throughout 1999. As part of this process, the state cleared all the land included in the concession, removing any remaining rolling stock from the yards, including the railway tracks.

The work focused on the Balboa freight yard, adjacent to Diablo Road, Summit, and Gamboa. Some of the railcars that were already in poor condition had been sold as scrap since 1992, but it wasn’t until the end of the 1990s that all remaining rolling stock was fully dismantled—such as tank cars, passenger cars, mixed freight or boxcars, and flatcars, in addition to locomotives and gondolas. The only item to survive this cleanup was passenger car number 262, which was refurbished and put on display at Summit Municipal Park.