I have been in Panama roughly 2 years now, and I had never been to see any of the locks on the Panama Canal, before yesterday. You know how a Powerbook or a Thinkpad or a Sony camcorder just fits together perfectly and works beautifully. Well the locks that manage the flow of traffic through the canal are just like that.
I can only imagine part of the awe this must have given the world when they were first built. From what I hear all the enthusiasm from the techno geeks of the day was for the canal. The locks used the largest concentration of electric motors and control circuitry ever deployed at that time. I imagine, when people thought about it back then, it was like when we hear that Google has in excess of 30,000 servers
The doors on the gates in the locks are operated by electric moters and are basically silent. They were designed by General Electric nearly 100 years ago. Some one told me that they were still using the original motors. I’m not sure thats true, but it sounds incredible.
In the above picture you can see a Panamax ship in the locks at Gatun. I couldn’t believe how tight a fit it is. The locks are 110 feet wide and the Panamax ships 106 feet wide. They are guided by electric “mules”, which was another innovation by General Electric back in the day. It’s pretty cool to see them go up and down the tracks.
Have a look at this video clip I took (its roughly 10MB).
If you’re visiting Panama City the closest locks are Miraflores. If you’re on a cruise ship in Colon on the Caribbean take a day trip to Gatun, where I went.
A few more pictures:
The ship we saw in the locks before heading into the Caribbean and most likely towards the US or Europe.
On the Caribbean side the only way to cross the canal is on a single track in front of the last gate.
The mouth of the Chagres river, which was the original trading route to the Pacific. This was taken from Fort San Lorenzo, which was ransacked by Sir Francis Drake.
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