Szablyár Péter: Step by step - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)

Margert Island with its extra stairs

■ The tender that fell ofifi the tracks at the Southern Station

and departures sides were not connected by a common building. As the station was built as a terminal with no through traffic, it had to be provided with an engine turntable. This was attached to the Vérmező end, where the clever contraption was built behind a red sandstone retaining wall resembling a bastion. Aligned with the wall was built a wide stairway and a vehicle ramp, which led from the square outside the station house (today's Kosciuszko Tádé utca) to the junction of Alkotás utca and Krisztina körút.

After World War 11, and due to the fact that the North Railway Bridge was destroyed by aerial bombardment, coals mined in the Dorog coal fields were transported to Kelenföld via the tracks of the HÉV suburban train by way of the Southern Station. On 18 September 1948, the 411-type steam engine pulling a goods train from the direction of the Kelenföld Station and crossing the turntable in Vérmező broke through the buffer and the railing and fell on what was then Endresz György tér (today's Magyar jakobinusok tere). The bogies of the tender were torn off the tender and the engine, which got stuck on the top of the wall, hit a pole supporting the overhead contact wire, rendering trams immobile for a while. What caused the accident was that the brakes of the train were not operating, which in its turn was the result of a series of human errors.

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