Southern Railway Station, Budapest

Text: dr. Nagy Béla

It did not take long for the world to recognize the significance of rail travel. Only appr. ten years after the opening of the Stockton – Darlington railway line, the law of 1836. XXV. was passed to start the construction of the railway routes between Pest-Buda and Vienna. The first station in Buda to receive trains running from Vienna via Nagykanizsa to Buda, the Transdanubian and the Lake Balaton region was completed in 1861. Its later version, the Southern railway station played an important part in the life of the capital city. In the years right before the change of the political system, the idea to transform the railway station into a multi-storey structure with complex functions to serve as an intermodular centre had been discussed several times. Alongside the connections between the underground and the railway, building shops, offices, apartments, institutions, recreation facilities, parking lots and green areas were also recommended. The debate over the Southern railway station, however, is still going on. The article below analyses the dilemmas concerning the future of the railway station focussing on the consequences of three potential concepts: development, scaling down and demolition.