igns of a thaw in U.S.-Cuban commercial relations are popping up right and left. Conservative groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are lobbying for a lifting of the trade embargo. (When Calvin Coolidge said the business of America is business, he wasn't kidding.) The Clinton Administration this year has been openly encouraging business missions to visit Cuba. The prospect of Cuba libre intoxicates farmers. It's estimated that agricultural exports to Cuba would begin at a half-billion dollars a year, rising to $2 billion.

The Washington Post recently reported that with the government's liberalized interpretation of the embargo rules, about 3,000 U.S. business people will visit Cuba this year. While they can't do any business there now, they're laying the groundwork to tap a market so promising that Canada has invested $600 million in Cuba in recent years and Mexico $450 million.

What role are Cuba's railways ready to play in any revival of national and international commerce? Forty years after a communist revolution cut this former AAR-standard railroad adrift, how has it managed to find the equipment and the components to keep rolling?

In August, a few weeks after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a delegation to Cuba headed by President Tom Donohue (who used to be CEO of the American Trucking Associations), Railway Age sent Executive Editor William C. Vantuono to look at Cuba's railroads and talk with Cuba's railroaders. Journalistically, we were not breaking new ground. Cuba has emerged as a Mecca for masses of tourists looking for a suntan or a smoke. Two major U.S. magazines have had cover stories recently on Cuba. But neither National Geographic nor Cigar Aficionado bothered to inquire into the state of the country's rail system. Bill Vantuono had a clear field.

We had two main questions:

• What is the general condition of the Cuban railway system?
• Would a return to AAR standards be viewed as desirable? Feasible? In becoming a customer of European rather than U.S. railway suppliers, have the Cuban railways become UIC-standard railways?