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

Margert Island with its extra stairs

■ Where the tracki of the South Railway Company ended in Buda

Reconstruction work on the buildings of the terminal, which was badly damaged in World War 11, was not started before the 1960s. It was then carried out with designs by György Kővári, although at one point the idea had emerged that the station would be eliminated altogether its functions taken over by the Kelenföld Station. It was at this time that the middle third of today's glass hall was built in the place of the demolished turntable. To this was joined a three-flight open stairway of an unusual spatial effect on the Vérmező side, with ticket offices located underneath the glass box. Several wide stairways lead from the station to the level beneath the building and branch out into several sections beneath the glass hall.

The carriage that "went down the stairs” at the Grand Boulevard

Built by the French firms Auguste De Serres and Eiffel G Co. to their own plans, the steel hall of the Western Station had been completed by October of 1877. With its time-mellowed aura, the station, which was unique in Hungary at the time with its combined floor space of 6134 square metres and its steel structure, is one of the major landmarks of the Grand Boulevard to this day.