Várnagy Zoltán: Urban Transportation - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1994)

before today’s enclosed shape evolved (the shape characteristic of the articulated trams made by Ganz Works which run, for example, on route number six). War-time memories survived in the word “stuka”, the nickname by which a particular tram was popularly known; the engine in this tram gave the same whining sound as the diver bombers of that name. Model 3200, however, was called “tumble” because of the strange way it moved, as if nodding.

During the “happy days of peace” before the First World War, Budapest experienced rapid growth and became a real metropolis. Comic writers of the day had a great liking for the topic of overcrowded trams with the “FÜLL” sign as they crawled along with clusters of passengers hanging on to the bars by the steps. Andor Gábor, a renowned writer of the period, wrote the following cabaret ditty, supposedly sung by a passenger on yielding up his soul as he is squashed flat in a tram car.

Two hundred were there in the tram,

I couldn’t move them with a ram;

Pushed and shoved thus in keen fever,

Having with me no steel lever.

So sighed a man in pain and sore,

“Your knee in me a hole will bore!”

Revenge he took with no more sigh,

Saturday afternoon, 4 November, 1944...

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