Várnagy Zoltán: Urban Transportation - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1994)
their brass hooters, these branch-line trains with their green-painted engines and green cars would carry hikers bound for the great outdoors and basket-women heading for the city’s markets. “By HÉV out into the open” goes the contemporary motto (HÉV is the Hungarian acronym for the name of the suburban railway company), which was one way of advertising a quickly developing transport network. Several loop-lines and spur tracks were added to the suburban railway system, and soon the construction of a second pair of rails was begun. Electrification commenced in 1906. The last HÉV line to be built was the one running to Csepel in 1951. It is called an express line, but strictly speaking this can only apply to its inner, Pest, section, as in Csepel it runs alongside one of the area’s busiest roads and there are several level crossings slowing down the trains. In 1959, a branch-line was added to service the Csillagváros housing estate with trains drawn by diesel engines. In the same year, another local tram line was put in, running from Csepel to Határ út in Kispest. Both lines were then phased out in 1965, buses providing public transportation ever since. Renewal of the Csepel Express Line is now the order of the day since it crosses the venue of the World Exposition scheduled for 1996. Changes in the suburban railway system reflected the development and growth of the capital. There have been trams running to Budafok, Nagytétény and Törökbálint since these districts underwent large-scale housing development, while the Sashalom branch line was replaced by a more frequent and flexible bus service. The terminus of the Gödöllő line was moved from Keleti (Eastern) Station to the metro terminus at Örs vezér tere. The line following an ancient Roman route passes now for the most modern suburban railway service with its fifteen to twenty-year-old cars and engines. All the way to Békásmegyer, there are huge housing estates and residential areas with prestigious-looking houses following one another along this route. It is not only the small town of Szentendre at the end of this line, but the villages, too, where the train stops attract those who are forced or choose to move out of Budapest. In Szentendre itself BKV (Budapest Public Transport Authority) has set up a museum in an old depot, where 26
