Lifelong steam enthusiast eyes a post-pandemic return to one of Europe’s preserved ‘hidden gems’
JAMES Waite is one of millions in the UK and around the world whose plans have been disrupted by the Covid pandemic. In some cases that disruption is permanent, but lifelong steam enthusiast James is hoping his is temporary – for one of his ambitions is to travel the Nagycenk Museum Railway, a little-known line in Hungary that he regards as a“hidden gem.”
The 760mm (2ft 6in) gauge line in the north-west of the country runs for nearly 2½ miles from the main line station of Fertöboz to the village of Nagycenk, where there is a railway collection on display comprising four 760mm and three metre gauge locomotives, one of which is an exsteelworks engine built in 1871.
The line was opened in the early 1970s by the joint HungarianAustrian railway GySEV in order to preserve locomotives and rolling stock of Hungary’s former light railways and to carry visitors to a former palace in Nagycenk, which was turned into a museum a few years previously.
The first section, running for nearly a mile from Fertöboz on the trackbed of a former standard gauge branch line, was built in just three months by schoolchildren and volunteers, with assistance for some of the heavier work from Soviet soldiers based at a nearby garrison. The second and final stage followed in July 1972.
“As well as preserving the narrow gauge stock and transporting visitors to the palace, the line, which remains part of GySEV, was conceived as a pioneer railway to enthuse children and train them in railway operations, and children are still involved in running it,” said James, who is retired.
Trains were initially run by two ex-quarry wood-burning 394 class 0-6-0Ts, of which 40 were built by Magyar Allamvasutak (MAV) in Budapest between 1916 and 1950, and these were subsequently joined by an MAV 492 class 0-8-0T that had previously worked at a colliery.
All three worked the trains until 1998, when one of the 0-6-0Ts, 1949-built No. 394.057, was sold to a forest railway in north-east Hungary, and seven years later 1924-built fellow class member No. 394.023 also moved away, to the Zsuzsi Forest Railway. This line, in Debrecen, Hungary’s second largest city, is the country’s oldest narrow gauge railway, having opened in 1882.
Diminutive newcomer
The departure of No. 394.023 left the 0-8-0T, which was also built in 1924 and now carries the name András, as the sole steam representative, and so a Class C-50 diesel was brought in to share duties. The locomotives in this 50hp class of four-wheeled locomotives are at 15ft no longer than a family saloon car, but their popularity with forest railways resulted in more than 200 being built by MAV between 1953 and 1966, and some survive today in commercial use. The Nagycenk Museum Railway example was transferred from a narrow gauge system at Lake Balaton, 100 miles to the south-east, where it ran on a tourist and commuter line that opens throughout the year and is the last narrow gauge railway operated by Hungarian State Railways.
James’s unplanned visit to Nagycenk came about on a hot Sunday in August 2019 during a business trip to Vienna, where he met Hans Hufnagel, a long-standing friend who is an eastern European narrow gauge enthusiast and the author of a number of books on Romanian forest railways.
“At Hans’s suggestion we visited Nagycenk, which was less than an hour’s drive away just over the border into Hungary,” he said. “I greatly welcomed the opportunity as I had never been there. Hungary is not over-endowed with heritage railways, and indeed the only others I can think of are two in the hills to the east of the country which both used steam until a few years ago but are now exclusively diesel, and the superb Budapest Children’s Railway.
“We had a great afternoon at what is a hidden gem. Things are very relaxed and low-key, and the seven locomotives on display in an open-air park are of great interest.
“I did not ride on the railway itself during my visit, and I would welcome the opportunity to do so when that would be possible.”
James, who like so many of his generation is a former trainspotter with fond memories of the Ian Allan ABC publications, describes the collection’s coaches, which come from a number of the country’s old narrow gauge railways, as a “mixed bunch,” with at least one of them having been converted from a tram.
The railway operates from April to October, with András, which is shedded in a former railway heating house at Fertöboz station, steaming over a number of weekends.