HamPage: Tram-hikers' guide to Budapest

... which also has a track connection to the tram (left). To the right: tram arriving to Mexikói út via Erzsébet királyné útja.

This quite spacious depot was opened together with the extension of the line from Széchenyi fürdő to here in 1973.

The terminus itself is under the surface, the vehicles only come up for the depot.

Lost rails: route 67 in Mexikói út

At the corner of the Kisföldalatti depot, our tramlines turn into Erzsébet királyné útja, but you can also see another pair of tracks, branch off onto the continuation of Mexikói út. This is where tram 67 headed for Thököly út until March 11. 1997, when traffic on the line was "suspended", with the cause for this being the bad condition of the tracks in Mexikói út between Erzsébet királyné útja and Thököly út, and in Thököly út between Hermina út and Stefánia út. Officially the line is not "dead", only supplemented by buses (thus their route designation "67V"). In reality, the tracks in Thököly út have been asphalted over at several locations, and the terminus at Baross tér doesn't exist anymore due to the construction works for the metro line M4.

This is a relatively quiet street in a residential area, where trams share the surface with cars...

The stop at Laky Adolf utca with the interesting layout is the result of the 2014 renovation.

After just one stop we arrive to the junction, where route 3 and 69 part ways, while 62 joins 3.

Interestingly both tram 3 and 62 have two stops in this junction: one before and one after the bend - but just when heading for Gubacsi út/Mázsa tér. This is one of the strange features making these services desperately slow.

The tram 69 to the right is of course not a scheduled car: it's just entering traffic from remise Zugló.

One of the characteristic feature of Nagy Lajos király útja is that it was designed with 2 lanes for cars + 2 tracks + 2 lanes for the cars going the other way, but for the most of it only half of this layout was built. After the stop after the junction the tram running in the middle strip becomes the tram running on the side of the street. This results in way too many crossings with small streets - and emergency brakings because of careless motorists getting in front of the tram.

Before we reach the crossing with Thököly út, the traffic lanes separate, and we're in the middle strip again.

The remise is located opposite to a church, and has a rather wretched connection to the "live" tracks, and also to the tracks in Thököly út (which haven't seen revenue usage since 1995). Therefore when a tram enters/leaves the depot, it blocks most of the crossing.

Aside the double skip via which the depot can be reached, there's also a simple crossover there, once used as the terminus turnback by the "lost" tramline 64.

Lost rails: Thököly út

The first horse trams have ran between Baross tér and Stefánia út in 1885. By 1897 the line was electrified, and also extended to Hungária körút, with newer and newer extensions: in 1898 to Róna utca, in 1899 to Bosnyák tér.

Archive photo: Heinz Heider

Route 44 was closed in 1995, but everything (tracks, overhead) remained as it was, because it was the only connection of remise Zugló with the rest of the tram network. It was sentenced to death when the connection with route 13 at Örs vezér tere was complete. Although officially also out of usage, the tracks of "lost" tram route 44 between Bosnyák tér and Rákospatak are still intact (the reversing loop at the end is truncated though).

Most of the tram's right-of-way is parked over by cars, but the first hundred meters are sometimes used for storing trams (e.g. during track renewals cutting remise Zugló away from the rest of the network).

The depot was opened in 1900 for the company BKVT. It's a small facility, which hasn't been modernised for the ex-Hannover TW6000 trams, because its future is uncertain - the municipality wanted to sell it but did not do so.

This is an area yet to be rehabilitated, with many emtpy parcels, and halfway complete - or halfway disintegrated - buildings. At the stop Szugló utca, the tram crosses trolley bus line 82.

Along our way while heading for Örs vezér tere we can see housing units from different ages: the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. The trams can be best photographed here in the morning, when the sun casts an almost perfect light onto them.

As you can clearly make out from the photos, this is in fact a wide road with trams in the middle, only that one side of the road hasn't been built.

The monotonity of TW6000s and CAFs is only broken when a faulty vehicle has to be supplemented with a vehicle from another line. Like the one to the right: a Ganz artic of route 24 springing in for a fallen tram 62.

After a slight bend, we arrive to the modern center of Zugló, which in fact lies on the border between Zugló (district XIV) and Kőbánya (district X). It's also the place where the inner terminus of the Gödöllő and Csömör HÉV (suburban railway) services face the outer terminus of the M2 metro line on the other corner of the crossing.

There's a stop on one side, close to the terminus of trolley bus lines 81 and 82 and of several other buses, and another on the other side, close to another large bus terminus. There's also a track crossing the tram's way, connecting the HÉV to the state railways. Until 1970 the HÉV line ran to Baross tér, but then the metro was opened, and it was cut here.

This really is a very busy place, with lots of people stepping into your pictures, but with a bit of patience you can get over that :)

Together with the depot of the metro, a large workshop was also built here at the end of the sixties; it's located behind the ugly tower building next to the metro terminus. It can be accessed by trams with a bit of running against normal traffic, which can be an interesting game during the late morning peak, when most of the transports reach/leave the workshop ("főműhely"):

"Fehér út" should have been the place where everything running on rails and owned by the BKV would be repaired and tried, but the HÉV went a different way. Due to the lack of money, smaller exams and repairs on trams are made in the remises, so the workshop is currently underutilised. To overcome this, they do other stuff, too, like repainting state railway coaches and buses.

Two photos of the TW6000, when they were arriving from Hannover - they were put onto the rails and into operation here.

The large halls can be accessed via two large traversers (one of them can be seen on the left). At the back one can always find something interesting, like UVs being stripped for spare parts (right), and there's also a 700-meter trial track there, where trams are tested at their top speed:

One side of the street is occupied by a small forest, which is nowadays populated by homeless people and garbage.

Trams leave the tracks on reservation after the stop Terebesi utca, and crawl along cars through an underpass (left). Then they make a sharp turn, climb (right), and arrive to the place called "Sharp corner" (Éles sarok).

... one can take photos of trams running parallel (left), trams with buses using the tracks (right) ...

... which was heavily reshaped in the seventies and eighties - not necessarily for its benefit. Before that, trams ran through a narrow neighbouring street, so the change was good for the trams, but the architecture leaves lot to be desired. To understand what has happened to this area, you must know that it was mainly inhabitated by labourers and less wealthy people, for whom these flats were a great step forward. After the fall of communism, most of the factories around here were closed, and this amplified vandalism and criminality. Rehabilitation has already started, ...

... and during the renovation of route 3 this was the place, where the positive changes were the easiest to see: the grass-covered tracks are a huuuuge improvement!

Unlost rails: the turnout of route 36 at Liget tér

When you arrived to Liget tér, you might have noticed the sad sight of an unusable turnout between 2003 and 2014. This relatively short stub used to be serviced by route 36, closed in 1994. The stretch from here to Kápolna tér remained usable until the switches were removed in 2003. Then in 2014 - contrary to what's usual in Budapest - the connection was restored!

The rest of the line in Kápolna utca is still abandoned, but a crossover switch was installed so the first 200 meters can be used for reversal during shortenings.

This is the last joint stop of route 28 and 3/62A. In the vicinity you can find a relatively large bus terminus and a state railway station (Kőbánya alsó vasútállomás).

Although the terminus is called Kőbánya alsó vasútállomás ("Lower Kőbánya railway station") / Mázsa tér, the reversing facility is a few hundred meters away, between the tracks of route 3:

The uncomplicated terminus (left) is followed by a somewhat deserted industrial area.

An older photo with just one track under the railway bridge (left) and a newer one with two (right).

To the left: the smoke-stacks of the Kőbánya powerhouse were torn down in 2010. To the right: one of the very few mansions in the street (the tram 62 on the photo was a depot run). Soon after this we arrive back to a more urban area, with high-rise apartment houses.

Before reaching Ecseri út we cross one of the busiest streets of Budapest: Üllői út.

Lost rails: Üllői út

Before the metro line M3 was built, this used to be the most congested tram corridor in town. Now its one the most congested road in town.

Archive photo: Tim Boric

(C) Lakos Rudolf, Németh Zoltán Ádám gyűjteményéből

Archive photo: from the collection of Zsolt Levente Nagy

The archive photos above were taken during the construction of the metro: tracks were laid and relaid and cut and moved and removed and relaid a few meters away for years.

Although the neo-romanesque Church of the Holy Cross was built as late as the 1920s (it was consecrated in 1930), it still makes a magnificent background for photos in the morning!

We now run along the József Attila housing area - a pet project of the regime between 1957 and 1980 built on the site of an infamous slum - for the next few hundred meters, and then turn left into...

Bends in every direction, without vehicular traffic, but with paved platforms everywhere so you don't have to step in the mud for good photo positions! ;) The branch turning towards Kispest, Határ út M is only used by depot runs and special workings.

"Határ" means "border", and the name is justified: this is the boundary between Ferencváros and Pesterzsébet - once the latter wasn't part of Budapest, so this was the city limits. The Ferencváros side is occupied by the gigantic, and now underused Ferencváros shunting yard and some related facilities, the other by the bucolic part of Pesterzsébet.

Soon we reach the exit of the large, unidirectional, single track Pesterzsébet loop (or more precisely: loops). Route 51 (formerly known as route 21, and 30 even earlier) leaves this exotic network-in-a-network by heading for Gubacsi út (thus joining route 3), while route 52 leaves in the other direction.

I hope the map above helps to decode what I meant to say :) The rest of the stretch is pretty much the same until we reach the entrance of the Pesterzsébet loops at Török Flóris utca, ...

... where route 51 goes straight (left - on the picture yet called route 30), while route 52 leaves us.

Route 3 ends in what's probably the most awkward and over-dimensioned terminus in town:

Here route 3 can reverse in three different ways:
1. going around in the reversing loop,
2. entering the stub track parallel to Határ út by using the crossover just before the loop,
3. turning onto Gubacsi út for about 200 meters, then changing to the other track on the crossover there, and use the big sweep going through the reversing loop, thus reaching the stub track parallel to Határ út
And you might see all three procedures done during the day: since route 3 is long, drivers have long pauses after their rounds, and while they're resting, their trams also stay where they were parked. But that's no problem: the other trams just take one of the other ways :)

To the left: the tram 3 near us will just go 'round the loop. To the right: the tram on the right has just left the platform where passengers can board, and the tram on the left will take its place by using the crossover in the middle of the photo.

To the left: a tram 3 heading for the sweep while changing directions via the crossover in Gubacsi út. To the right: trams having their pause in the reversing loop.

Two special photos taken at this terminus - left: a heritage tram-set on its first test run, just leaving the reversing loop, while a tram 13 waits on the stub track. To the right: you can see how the sweep track reaches the stub one, and also how the reversing loop leads to the boarding platform.

The boarding platform is surprisingly simple, at least compared to the reversing facilities. It was upgraded with a (somewhat) raised platform during the renewal in 2014, resulting in a strange contrast to the surroundings.

Lost rails: Ady Endre utca

If the thing with the Pesterzsébet loop seemed complicated, then I probably should mention that at one time there were more loops than now, therefore there were more exits/entrances (the direction of circulation was changed at one point) than Jókai Mór utca and Török Flóris utca. One of the "lost" paths was Ady Endre utca.

Archive photo: Heinz Heider

This section of the loop system was closed in 1979. On the archive photo above we see a tram 31 leaving Pesterzsébet for Gubacsi út. As you can see on the other photo, not only the tram vanished, but also the whole street (at least on this end)!

Lost rails: the HÉV terminus

Archive photo: the collection of Zsolt Levente Nagy

Once there was a HÉV service connecting Pesterzsébet with Csepel island. To put it simple, the workers of the factories on the island lived in Pesterzsébet, and this was how they went to work, and then home. The route of this service changed from time to time, but between 1959 and 1978 it started from where today's tram terminus is. BUT: it's not the same loop, as we can see on the "then&now" photos above. Some of the old overhead posts are still the same, though.

Lost rails: Baross utca + HÉV

There was another track right next to the HÉV: it lead to the other entrance of the Pesterzsébet loop system until 1972.

Archive photo: tramway.com

On the old photo above you can see the other track in front (or better: parallel to) the HÉV train. The parallel running only lasted a few hundred meters, then the tram turned into Baross utca - this is how tram 13 first penetrated Pesterzsébet. But then a big high-rise housing area was built around this street, and the tram was removed from it - how stupid!

By the way, if you walk further along from the stub track of the tram terminus, you will also find some abandoned tracks in the weed. After the HÉV line was suspended, a connecting track was built between the tram terminus and the HÉV line to Ráckeve, for service/freight usage (e.g. this is where many old trams were transferred to a scrapyard near Szigetcsép, where they were first set on fire, and then chopped to pieces).

Disclaimer: The author cannot be held responsible for mistakes, misinterpretations, inaccuracies, inactualities, etc. on/of these pages, nor for the content of other pages linked in.