Secrets of Budapest: The Nyugati railway station

Funzine.hu believes that you have to be a very special someone to get your own waiting hall at a railway station. For instance a king, like Franz Joseph, who was the ruler of Hungary in 1877, when the Nyugati railway station was constructed.

Before going into the history of the building, we should clarify that Nyugati (meaning western in Hungarian) is not western at all: the railway station wasn’t named after its geographic location, but the Nyugat railway company, which supported the construction works.

At the time of its inauguration, Nyugati was the 5^th biggest railway station in the world designed by acknowledged masters like August de Serres and Gustave Eiffel. The latter designed the ironwork of the station, following an idea similar to what he used in the case of the Eiffel Tower.

It was the country’s first railway line inaugurated in 1846, which ran (or more so, ambled, as it covered the short way in 53 minutes) between Vác and Pest, and had its Pest terminal at the place of today’s Nyugati railway station. In that time there was a so called indóház (the word was created from indul = start and ház = house by neologists) built on today’s boulevard and its opposite side.

The construction of a new railway station was necessary due to increased train traffic and the boulevard in making. The construction works could only start after the demolition of the old indóház. It’s interesting that its last parts were only demolished at the end of the 1970s.

Kings in favour

Nyugati railway station, and mostly its neighbourhood, used to look completely different from how it looks now. It used to be surrounded by a huge garden with many trees. Today, the only tree reminiscent of this time is a 3 metre big, 130-year-old platan.