N. Kósa Judit - Szablyár Péter: Underground Pest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
Fish, flesh and fowl down below - the cellars of the Central Market Hall
tricity in the tracks can be turned off and that the mechanically operated, steel doors can be sealed hermetically so that undesirable surface effects (such as shockwaves, excessive heat, chemical and radioactive poison) are kept out. Any long-term stay down there requires air and water supplies. The two metro lines have been broken up into shorter emergency sections including two or three stations and the tunnels connecting these to each other. Each section has it own generator and its air and water supply system. There are 350 kW twin generators kept in large engine chambers constructed on the same level as the tunnels ready to supply the power with which the escalators, the lighting, ventilation and water mains systems can be operated in an emergency. (If the surface water mains system should be rendered useless, the metro's own well would supply the water vital for underground survival.) The exhaust fumes of the generator engines can be conducted to the surface, and the ventilators suck in air through double filters from the surface. These work like giant gas masks. In the first phase, the larger dust particles are trapped in sack filters, while in the second special, carbon filters partially neutralise gaseous contaminants. There were stories in circulation throughout the 1950s of huge subterranean food storehouses, hospitals and other emergency bases. Now it is known that no such installations were made and that their maintenance would not have been feasible either. Despite being regularly maintained and tested, all this equipment will unavoidably be rendered obsolete. As part of the overhaul of line M2 planned for 2002-2007, these auxiliary installations will also be modernised. Fish, flesh and fowl down below - the cellars of the Central Market Hall In the late 1880s it was a matter of dispute whether the building of a district and appeals court or a central market hall should be erected on the site known at the time as Sóház-telek, or Salt House Plot, behind the Main Customs Office. It was not until 30 June 1892 that the municipality decided that a market hall meant to replace the open-air market of the Inner City and also to house the wholesalers’ businesses was to be built on the edge of the Ferencváros (Francis Town) area near the Danube. The invitation for tenders stipulated that there should be cellars beneath the whole building, but that the lowest point of the basement should be above the average level of the Danube’s flow. Further specifications stipulated that the lowest internal height of the basement was >4
