Constructing History in Miniature

Andrew Efthimiadis was born at Gorgas Hospital in 1965. His father was a pediatrician there. That detail tells you everything about where Andrew comes from and how deep the roots go.

He graduated from Balboa High School in 1983, earned his degree in Marine Transportation from Texas A&M Galveston in 1988, spent ten years at sea, and returned to Panama in 1997 to begin his career as a Panama Canal Pilot. He served in the U.S. Naval Reserves from 1988 to 2008. Today he is a Senior Pilot and Supervisor for the Panama Canal Authority, guiding some of the largest vessels on earth.

But there is another project. One that lives in his workshop.

He calls it Echoes of the Canal / Ecos del Canal. It is a hand-crafted, large-scale model of the Culebra Cut. The most difficult and celebrated stretch of the entire canal construction, where workers blasted through the Continental Divide itself, removing over 100 million cubic yards of earth and rock under blistering tropical heat. The Cut was called “the special wonder of the canal.” No single section of the project drew more attention, more dread, or more human cost.

Andrew built his model drawing on more than two decades of navigating that exact passage as a working pilot. It does not show the Culebra Cut as it looks today. It shows how it looked during construction; steam shovels, rail lines, workers, early excavation equipment, set into the deep rock-and-dirt valleys as they appeared between 1908 through 1913. Every detail period-accurate. Every element hand-placed. Running 40 meters in length and 2 to 3 meters wide — from Gold Hill all the way to Flamenco — the model is currently about 25% complete.

It is less a model than a time machine.

Andrew describes it plainly: this miniature represents the work and sacrifice of the many people who built the canal. Their story deserves to be remembered. As he put it,“build it and they will come.”

The model is currently housed privately. Andrew is actively seeking a permanent public exhibition space within the canal area. Maybe at Balboa, the old train station site, the Amador Causeway, anywhere the public can stand in front of it and truly understand what building the Panama Canal cost in human effort. He is open to recommendations and conversations with anyone who can help make that happen. Telemetro Reporta has described the project as constructing history in miniature.

To support that mission, Andrew is in the process of organizing a nonprofit for those who wish to contribute to this project. Stay in tune with Andrew if you are interested in what he is building — literally and otherwise.

He has been featured multiple times on SCN Canal Zone Channel 8, the YouTube channel run by Will Benninghoff and Ricky Royo. Will and Ricky have built something genuinely valuable: a living archive of Zonian voices. They conduct in-depth interviews with former Canal Zone residents, host virtual gatherings that bring scattered Zonians back together, and preserve personal histories that would otherwise disappear. Full interviews with Captain Andrew, including raw canal transit footage, can be found on their channel at @SCNCanalZoneChannel8.

Canal Zone Documentary is documenting Andrew’s story as part of a broader effort to preserve the history of the Canal Zone and the people connected to it. If you know of an institution or space that could give Echoes of the Canal a permanent home, share it in the comments or reach out directly.