On Time

On the day after Christmas, Hungary suffered one of the worst train wrecks in its history; 20 were killed, more than 100 injured. But few Hungarians knew of it. According to later reports, Matyas Rakosi's Communist officials simply executed the train's engineer and suppressed all news of the incident. The first the Hungarians heard of the disaster was over a Voice of America broadcast.

Last week in Munich, another Hungarian engineer--one who got away--was supplying the Voice with more facts about Hungarian railroading under the Communists. He was a young man who had left a farm only four years ago to go to Budapest and try his luck on the railroads. "There were many new locomotives on the roads then," he said, "but they were all heading east to Russia. All we had were old 'Truman 525.' " So called in derision, these were obsolescent U.S. locomotives sent over as stopgap aid before the Iron Curtain fell. Most were falling apart. The responsibility for keeping them rolling on short rations of coal and lubricants fell on their engineers.

Torpedo on the Track. Savings in fuel and grease meant bonuses, and engineers were constantly chancing runs on nearly greaseless bearings. Keeping the creaky engines in trim meant long hours of extra work for the drivers, but a breakdown was never blamed on faulty equipment. It was always labeled negligence or sabotage. Fearful of punishment and goaded by high wages (up to 1,250 forints--about $100--a month), the engineers did what they could, but accidents were frequent, timetables seldom kept. Engineers who complained, disappeared.

One night, the engineer who talked in Munich last week was at the throttle, driving a train of tank cars for Russia through a thick fog after 18 straight hours on the job. At last he dozed off. An alert switchman dropped a warning torpedo underneath his wheels in time to avoid a collision, but the young engineer was promptly arrested for sabotage. This is the rest of the story as he told it:

Barrel of laughs. At the jail on Rakoczy Street in the town of Gyor, policemen wielding hoses persuaded him to admit the sabotage; but it was not enough. He was ordered to name the U.S. agent who had bought him off. He knew of no agent. He was taken to another jail, on Bela Bartok Street, and placed in a barrel-shaped container which rolled around and around like the Barrel of Laughs at a carnival. Hours later he was taken out, spitting blood but still unable to name a guilty American. The Communists strapped him in a chair under a gadget like a beauty-shop hair drier that shot small electric charges into his skull. He screamed for release and tried desperately to think of an American name--any American name--that might satisfy his torturers, but he could think of none.

At long last, his inquisitors gave up and loaded him on board a train for Budapest, under guard and shackled with chains. It was a road he had often driven: he knew its grades, its crossings, the country on each side of its right of way. He asked his guard for permission to use the toilet. The guard removed his arm and leg irons, saw him into the small compartment at the car's end, and stood sentinel outside.

The prisoner waited for the grade he knew was just ahead. As the train slowed, he slammed open the door, knocked the guard against the corridor wall, raced off the train and into the woods. A guard's bullet hit his arm, but by the time the train stopped, the prisoner had enough head start to lose his pursuers. A week later he was safe across the border in Austria. "I can't reveal exactly how I did it," he said, "but even among Rakosi's trusted men, there are a few decent people."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.