Clear the Track

Mexico's rickety, government-owned railroads, which have averaged a wreck a week for the last six months, are responsible for almost as many jokes as the Toonerville Trolley. In a current vaudeville skit, the spurned lover threatens: "If you don't marry me, I'll buy a railroad ticket." Says the traveler in a newspaper cartoon: "One ticket to Ciudad Jucrez, please--and can you recommend a good hospital?" When a Cuernavaca-bound passenger train slammed head-on into a freight in the suburb of Tacubaya outside Mexico City one day last week, Ultimas

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In part because much of their equipment is 40 years old," Mexican trains arrive on time so seldom that Mexicans call them las tortugas (turtles). In 1947, 162,000 passenger trains pulled in late; freight-train delays were so fantastic that the government suppressed the figures. On one 700-kilometer run, one freight "turtle" crawled in just 100 days late.

Last week, with the air of a man who had stood for such nonsense long enough, President Miguel Aleman announced that his government would spend $88 million in the next two years to overhaul Mexico's railways. His plan (prepared by a special commission appointed last February): 1) convert every line in the country to standard gauge; 2) eliminate the steep grades and kinky turns that cause most wrecks; 3) gradually modernize rolling stock. The President called on his Finance Minister to find the necessary funds, which will probably be raised through new taxation. "The railways," Aleman said flatly, "will be in perfect state before my administration is over ."

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