Short history of the Hungarian Railways

Part #7: After WW2 (1945-1948)

The Soviets first considered all railway property as booty, but a few years later they returned them to MÁV. Many Hungarian locos were taken away by the German Army, but there were also large numbers of German locomotives remained in Hungary. These were exchanged between 1948 and 1952 for Hungarian engines that were taken away by the Germans.

The Hungarian manufacturers were obliged to produce locomotives as war reparation for the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. First these were versions of the Hungarian Class 424 engines, bur later the Soviets delivered plans of their Class E (0-5-0) steamer, and this was built for a long time. Over 1500 pieces were built as war reparation. This activity restricted the production capacity to build engines for Hungary. Thus MÁV seized the opportunity and purchased 510 American War locomotives of the USATC S-160 Consolidation. They were $100,000 each. This was very cheap, considering that the Hungarian 424 type steamers produced as war reparation, were accounted by $240,000 each.

The destroyed lines were rebuilt soon. In October 1945 already the electric operation started between Budapest and the Tatabánya coalfields. The most important bridges were rebuilt first using temporary screwed constructions. The biggest one was the Budapest Southern Connecting Bridge, that was replaced in 1955 by a final structure. Its screwed bridge elements were however transported to build up the Budapest Northern Connecting Bridge, that is in use in this form still today.

Locomotive Development

No significant development was made in these years. The large number of reparation locomotives required however to introduce mass production methods, like welded boilers and production line organization.

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