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

Smoke under the surface - the railway tunnel at the Southern Station

■ The Kelenföld exit of the tunnel

new railway bridge to be built south of today's Margaret Bridge along the axis of Bem József utca.

Luckily perhaps, the plan fell through, and construction work on the tunnel started below the slopes of Sas Hill (Fehér Hill at the time). The rock and soil removed from the tunnel was used for the filling of the depression between what are now Villányi út and Budaörsi út.

The 351-metre long tunnel was driven into the dolomite rock of Gellért Hill Minor, near the "town quarry", whose characteristic greyish-white walls are visible in the neighbourhood of the ’BAH’ intersection (of Budaörsi út, Alkotás utca and Hegyalja út) and Villányi út to this day. The tunnel was built to admit two tracks with a distance of 3.6 metres between their axes. When electrification of the line between the Kelenföld Station and the Southern Station necessitated an enlarged section, the bottom level of the tunnel was sunk by almost a metre.

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