Hungarian Review, 1978 (24. évfolyam, 5-12. szám)
BUDAPEST July 15, 1846 was a great day in the transport history of Hungary: the first railway to use steam locomotion was opened between Pest and the town of Vác, 34 kilometres to the north. Not far from where Eiffel’s Nyugati (West) Station stands today, passengers arrived in the centre of Pest at an oldfashioned station house. That station house coped with the traffic for 25 years, but as new lines opened and the number of passengers increased, there was a need to expand. First a two-storey annexe was built, but in 1872 the railway company (after a long period of ownership by a private Austrian company, it only became part of Hungarian State Railways in 1891) decided that a new station would be a better solution than further additions to the existing buildings. Another factor in the company’s decision were the plans which had just been announced The steel-framed main hall of the new station was one of the largest in Europe PHOTOS 8. REPRODUCTION: ILDIKÓ LACZKÓ 3