Saw the artical a while back and saw pics of trains running next to poles but no wire, googled and no info at least in english reagrding Electric Traction in Panama
Try KANSAS CITY RAILWAY for info on Panama Canal Railway (they own it) it’s only 47 miles long and all diesel and making money, those poles may have been power or telegraph lines, and the Panama Canal runs North and South, not East and West.
Apparently the electrical poles were used for ‘domestic’ electrical transmission, not railroad. See this thread, especailly the 1st photo near the top and the post by Jack / “africansteam” on 10/06/11 at 20:42:
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?6,2581419
(I thought it might be related to some GE E60 electric locomotives that never went into service, but that was in Mexico instead - see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_E60#E60C-2 )
- Paul North.
January 2014 (Vol. 74, No.1) issue of Trains, “The Biggest Little Railroad On Earth”, story and photos by Peter A. Hansen, pgs. 28 - 35 inclusive. The H-shaped poles/ towers appear in both the photo on the bottom half of page 32 (though no wires are visible in the misty/ foggy gray scene), and in the middle of the right 2 columns of page 35 (many wires - perhaps a dozen - are visible hanging from the triangle-shaped supports on the tops of the poles, but none over the tracks).
A fair guess is that these supports were designed and installed so as to facilitate the possible future electrification of the railroad, if that ever occurred, perhaps as a concession in return for being able to use the railroads right-of-way. That would not have added much (if anything) to the cost of the transmission line alone. Those structures are reminiscent of the design of the Pennsylvania RR’s “K-type” catenary structures, which may have been used by other railroads in their electrifications back around then (1910’s - 1930’s) too (the Reading RR comes to mind). See for example the photo at about the middle of this webpage: http://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?279467-PRR-Style-Catenary-Supports
See also the photos of the Lane Tower module/ diorama at the middle of this thread here: http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/t/167492.aspx
and: http://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/topic/of-interest-to-prr-fans
- Paul North.
Thats what I am saying is that those poles are ripped right out of PA like the Pennsy Port Road