This will never work. A typical Panamax ship carries 4800 containers. A typical freight train carries 240. You need 20 trains for each ship; at 2km per train, that’s a continuous line of 40km. In reality trains need at least 10km between them, so that’s 240km. But you need slack in the system, otherwise any hiccup results in a huge jam. So realistically the maximum capacity of such a railway is one Panamax per day and direction. What fees can you charge to cover the operating costs and the capital financing costs? And to hope to be competitive with the canal?
They certainly can, but to build two you first build one. And if that one is not profitable, why would adding another one make it so? You could say that building 2 parallel tracks is not significantly more expensive than building one, and when you have the 2 you need less slack in the system, so you can have closer to 100% utilization rate. Yes, you could gain some economies of scale, but the fundamental problem remains: if you cross the canal, you just float on water; if you decide to use this alternative, you need to unload the ship, load 20 trains, run the trains for 300 km, unload them and load them on another ship. To be competitive with the canal, you need to do this for about $200k. The $200k should cover the operating costs (fuel, labor, equipment depreciation), the maintenance costs, the insurance costs, the capital costs and hopefully should include some profit.
