Budapest Castle Hill Funicular part of World Heritage

100 meters long, 50 meters high with 30 degrees of tilt. Budapest Castle Hill Funicular operates since 1870. The funicular was severely damaged in the bombings of 1944. It was restored in 1986. It became part of the World Heritage one year later, as Pestbuda.hu reports.

Count István Széchenyi’s younger son, Ödön came up with the idea in 1866. It was inspired by the funicular connecting Croix-Rousse and Lyon.

The construction process began in 1868 and it took 16 months. The first plans were designed by Ödön Juraszek, but it was Henrik Wolfahrt’s blueprint according to which the world’s second funicular was built.     

After the successful test runs, the first steam railway in Budapest was put into service in 1870. The bottom station was built at Chain Bridge’s bridgehead in Buda and the top one was built on Szent György Square. They are connected with a 100 meters long railway with two tracks.

The railway is tilted by 30 degrees.  The bottom level is one story above the street.

The vehicle was supported by the 35 PS steam machinery at the lower station, but it was just helping the two rakes pulling each other. The machinery was built by Tórod Schulz’s factory in Vienna, while the furnace was from EMAG (the First Hungarian Machine Factory). The structures were towed with steel wires. Iron claws were attached to each end of the rakes in order to stop them on the slopes in the case of an accident. The two rakes were moving oppositely with a speed of 8 km/h. They were divided into three classes, and the total capacity was 24 people. A ticket for the first class costed 6 kreuzers, while the second class costed 4.