This remains a favorite, morbid joke about the Italian dictator, but although Mussolini's PR team aggressively bragged during his tenure about how punctual the trains had magically become, their service in reality was improved only slightly, and they certainly weren't always on time. (Totalitarian regimes do this sort of thing frequently – who's going to risk their life contradicting a tyrannical dictator over something as silly as train schedules? Nobody, that's who.) Why perceptions about Italy's train system were so important to Mussolini's regime remains unclear, but for habitual users of public transport, we can certainly understand what a Godlike miracle this must have sounded like on paper.