Travel chaos as trains come to a standstill at major Budapest railway station – UPDATE
From Monday afternoon, trains will not depart or arrive at the Déli Railway Station indefinitely, MÁVINFORM reports.
According to MÁV, the affected trains will typically arrive and depart from Kelenföld station. Suburban trains on the Győr main line, Székesfehérvár and Pusztaszabolcs lines depart and come from other stations in Budapest.
Between the two stations, you can take the BKK bus lines 139, 140, 140A to Sasadi út, from where you can walk to the Kelenföld station in a few minutes. Train tickets are accepted on these buses and along the entire M2 and M4 metro lines.
Reason for the traffic disruption
The traffic disruption was caused by an incident involving an S12 train (4435) from Kelenföld, which continued towards Déli station despite a prohibition signal. Train traffic is suspended on the section between Budapest-Kelenföld and Déli station until the situation is investigated. The reorganisation of train services is currently underway.
As previously reported, Keleti station has been closed twice due to train derailments, the latest incident: Train derailed at Keleti station, several trains delayed
read also: Tragedy at Novi Sad railway station linked to Hungarian-owned firm, reports Serbian media
UPDATE
According to the latest information, traffic has been restored at the Déli Railway Station (Déli Pályaudvar).
So, yesterday I took the train from Zagreb, Croatia to Deli. (Deli is the absolute pit, BTW; it REALLY needs to be renovated, pronto!).
The train racked up 40 minutes’ delay by the time it crossed the border into Hungary. That’s nothing new: The Croatian railroad just can’t get their s… together for whatever reason. Luckily, in Nagykanizsa, where they ordinarily hold up the train for almost a half hour, which is utterly preposterous, they waved us on within a couple minutes, bringing the total delay down to a quarter hour. Not too bad.
But alas!
We get to Balatonszentgyorgy: a two-minute stop. We’re standing there for a half hour. Then we start moving, but only a couple hundred yards, before the engine pushes us BACK into the station. Cue another THIRTY-FIVE wait. During this entire time not a single announcement was made, no updates, the conductor is nowhere to be seen. We’re just sitting there like idiots, not knowing when or IF we will ever move and, indeed, make it to Budapest.
In the end, we arrived in Deli an hour and 45 minutes later than scheduled.
This train (the IC201 AGRAM as well as the one going in the opposite direction: IC204) has been late every single time I took it over the past 1-1/2 years, which has been in 8-9 instances. Sometimes it’s “only” 20-30 minutes; often it’s more. If it was the middle of the day, it wouldn’t necessarily be a big deal, but the timetabled arrival is 2225 hrs.
The globalist-socialist clowns want us to cut back on use of private vehicles and take mass transit instead. I’m telling you what, though: The next time I have to make this trip, I am taking the biggest, baddest, least fuel-efficient monstrosity of an S.U.V. I can find and driving in to Croatia and back. I am NEVER taking this dadgum train again.
I’m afraid, Michael, there’s only one direction in which to direct your disapproval of Hungarian trains and we both know where that is. The parlous state of MAV is nothing to do with ‘globalist socialists’ and everything to do with the wilful, targeted neglect of the railways by the government, who spend vastly more on the road network than on rail and plan to continue doing so over the next decade. We live in a free world and you’re at liberty to drive to Croatia in your Hummer (at your own expense), but wouldn’t it be better for everyone if you could pay your 35 Euros and get between Budapest and Zagreb broadly on time in reasonable comfort?