N. Kósa Judit - Szablyár Péter: Underground Buda - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)

"Pioneer choo-choo" - the tunnel of the Children's Railway

■ entrance to the tunnel

One technical curiosity of the line is the tunnel between the Hárs Hill Station and the Hűvösvölgy terminus. Its construction could have been avoided with a 4 to 4.5 kilometre section with an even elevation; what was designed instead is a tunnel of a 0.02 per cent elevation and with a central angle of 254 degrees lying along an 80 metre arc. As a result, trains travel 2.6 kilometres surmounting a level difference of 71 metres between two stations.

The pilot tunnel (a horizontal shaft opened from the surface) was started on 12 January 1949. The 198-metre tunnel was built in six-metre instalments. The 1,100 cubic metres of rock and earth extracted was removed by way of a vertical shaft sunk into the tunnel at its middle. The tunnel was profiled so that an overhead wire could be fitted in for electric traction.

In 1998, on the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of its first section, the forest railway, renamed the Széchenyi Hill Children’s Railway of MÁV Co., received customers in a renewed form. The line is now jointly operated by MÁV (Hungarian Railways), the Municipality of Budapest and the NGO Foundation for Children Railway Operators. Offering new services and working in a new spirit while preserving the nostalgic memories of the former Pioneers' Railway, the line has remained a unique attraction of Hungary’s capital.

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