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

When the stairs move along. the escalators of Budapest

■ The Moszkva tér station is the deepest of the whole network

used with the driving of mining tunnels with a circular cross-section), monolith ferro-concrete, slurry walls or a combination of these. The inclined mother gates have an internal diameter of 7.9 metres - it is by way of such shafts that we ride on the escalators down to the Astoria station. Twin at-an-angle shafts were sunk in places where heavy passenger traffic necessitated the use of four escalators. Their diameters can reach 6.3 metres and at the junction of the circle-segments a row of pillars is used to reinforce the shaft’s integrity similarly to the structure supporting the larges stations (e.g. at Astoria). An inclined mother gate for the escalators of imposing dimensions without supporting pillars was sunk at the southern exit from the stop at the Western Railway Station of metro line 3.

In the fifties the metro tunnels were being drilled, while the objective of construction work re-launched in the sixties was the construction of connecting links to the surface. In the beginning larger concrete boxes were sunk (at Astoria, the Eastern Station and Deák tér) to be used as escalator casing. With the arrival of the slurry-wall technique (used for water-blocking and supporting walls that are mostly made by pouring concrete into trenches excavated into the soil) the engine- houses of escalators were created with the new method (at Blaha Lujza tér, Kossuth tér, and the stations of line 3). With no conventional staircases planned, space had to be found for a minimum of three or four parallel escalators to be installed with

56