Horse railway and station

If the question on a TV quiz show is what was the first railway in Hungary, the correct answer is the one between Pest and Vác. In fact, it was built earlier between Bratislava and Nagyszombat, although it was not pulled by mechanical power there. We know the horse-drawn railway as a means of urban transport, but in Hungary, long-distance traffic was also experimented with even before the first mechanical railway was built. In fact, some of the network plans created before the railway constructions calculated that only the main lines would be built as steam railways, with horses providing the traction on the smaller railways, also in order to support horse breeding. ; Combine the momentum of the Reform Era with the relative technical backwardness of Hungary at the time, and we get the Bratislava–Nagyszombat horse-drawn railway. This corner of the country was considered to be exceptionally developed at the time, primarily due to its proximity to Vienna: the free royal cities were lined up almost next to each other. ; In England in 1825, on the continent ten years later, public steam-hauled railways were already operating between Brussels and Mechelen. Although the Viennese banker György Sina and the Rothschilds had already received permission to build several railway lines in 1836, Hungary's first intercity railway line was still launched on September 27, 1840, with horse-drawn traffic, between Bratislava and Szentgyörgy. ; Its initiators were the Austrian baron G. W. Walterskirchen and the Hungarian count of French origin, Ferenc Dezasse, who applied to the Governor's Council for a concession for construction. The joint-stock company established for the purpose of construction was founded in 1838. ; The company asked the Austrian engineer Mathias Schönerer, the builder of the first European horse-drawn railway, to provide an expert opinion on the plan, conduct field surveys and lay out the track. He considered the request feasible and the plan feasible. With the intervention of the Governor's Council, the company invited the Hungarian engineer Hieronymus Ferenc Ottó, who, as the chief engineer of the State Construction Directorate, was engaged in the preparation of the hydrographic map of the Danube. He was worked on (among others): Gyula Lechner, Ferenc Reitter, Gusztáv Rauschmann, Gusztáv Perleberg and the Englishman Charles Bactge. Hieronymus started drawing maps, because the offices did not have reliable maps. He required qualified staff for the work carried out in the field, but even the assistants could read and write. The railway line was laid out from the Coronation Hill in Bratislava (today's Ludovít Stúr Square) through the free royal cities of Szentgyörgy, Bazin, Modor to Nagyszombaty. The stations were designated in Bratislava, Bazin, Senkőc and Nagyszombat, while the transhipment point was in Szentgyörgy, and the rest areas were in Récse and Cífer. Later, new ones were established near Limpak, in Báhony and for a while in Pozsonyszőlős. The local city council expressed its protest against the railway line through Modor, fearing the "upsurge of immorality". (When the horse-drawn railway was converted into a steam railway, the people of Modřice offered 60,000 gold coins to have the tracks laid closer to their town. Their request was not granted.) Although the Governor's Council finally issued the building permit in 1839, the finished plan was only submitted to the company on January 1, 1840, but surveying work began only in 1837, and by 1838 several hundred workers were already working on the construction of the 6.5 German miles (49.449 km) long track. The track ran on flat ground at the foot of the Little Carpathians. Half of the track length was horizontal, with the highest gradient not exceeding 3.1%. Despite this, the builders could not avoid major earthworks. For example, in the Grinava subsidence, an 8 m high embankment was built in front of Szentgyörgy, near the Podmaniczky mill next to the Szentgyörgy stream. When digging a 7 m deep cut north of Bazin, more than 270,000 m3 of soil was extracted, which was transported by horse-drawn carriages to the Siseczky Valley to build a 9 m high and almost 1 km long embankment. A slightly smaller embankment was built in the Hájecki Valley, almost 10 m high, while in the Senkő Valley it was 12 m high. The longest embankment was near Cífer: 1320 m long and 7.5 m high. The soil excavated from the pits serving the pottery workshops was used to build the embankments in the valleys. After Szentgyörgy, the builders faced the largest surface obstacle, the bog, in which subsidence occurred. The swamps were fed by water flowing from the Little Carpathians. Hieronymos also underestimated their danger. The bridge near Szentgyörgy collapsed a few years later (on July 24, 1843), while the bridge at Senkőc collapsed after a few months. The company was dissatisfied with the local workers, so it recruited new workers from Moravia and Austria. The pride of the construction is the Báhony viaduct with nine arches, of which the three middle bridge openings had a span of 9.5 m. Beams were placed on the 30 cm deep and 60 cm wide compacted gravel bed, the longitudinal ones were made of oak, while the transverse ones were made of alder. The distance between them was 142 cm. The rails were fixed to the longitudinal support beams with flat, 1.3 cm thick and 6 cm wide (6.5 cm and 4.75 cm in places) "ear" nails made of wrought iron (5.6 kg/m2). Unlike the horse-drawn railways in Bohemia, steam traction was already expected on the line between Bratislava and Nagyszombat. The track, the smallest curves with a radius of 455 m (2400), the track bed and the gauge, which was of the English type (1435 mm), were adjusted to this. However, the construction was only designed to carry the load of horse-drawn carriages, with a maximum axle load of 0.5 t. According to the plans, the construction would have taken two years. The first 15.2 km section between Bratislava and Szentgyörgy was opened on September 27, 1840. After that, the construction was delayed by problems with land expropriation, material purchase and speculation with shares, which the founders of the company began to sell to Viennese bankers. The construction of the next Szentgyörgy-Bazin section (5 km) was only completed on June 30, 1841. In June 1842, the works stopped due to lack of money. The workers and technicians were dismissed. Hieronymus also left. However, the company did not give up, in March 1844 it issued 3,000 shares, obtained financial support from the Viennese Rothschild bank and asked Hieronymus to return. He undertook the work again and revised the calculations, re-measured and designated the plots to be expropriated, repaired the damage (for example, at Bazin) caused by the autumn rains and the subsequent frosts that destroyed the track, and elsewhere the subsidence of some track sections caused by the spring thaw. ; After correcting the errors, the construction of new sections was completed from August 1844 to the end of the following year. On October 19, they reached Senkőci (7.5 km), on December 1, Báhony (7.5 km), and on December 29, Cífer (4 km). The last 9 km section, extending to Nagyszombat, was completed on June 1, 1846. The 15 km section of the track between Nagyszombat and Szered, which was planned afterwards at the general meeting on April 5, 1844 (for which a remarkable 150 m long wooden bridge was also built, which was probably the work of the Bratislava carpenter Spinzel and made according to the American Long structural system), was put into operation on November 1, 1846. It was possible to travel to Váhkeresztúr two months after the completion of the Nagyszombat section. ; The use of horses as motive power at a time when the advantages of steam locomotives were known was chosen so that Hungarian horses and Hungarian fodder could be used. Otherwise, expensive steam engines and coal would have had to be purchased from abroad. Fast horses suitable for passenger traffic were bred on the Hortobágy plain, while freight transport was carried out by the so-called Styrian horses. The former were used for a maximum of four years, while the latter for six years. After that, they became private property. The horses were always "on duty" for two days, resting on the third day. Two horses pulled a maximum of five freight cars or two passenger cars and for no more than 40 km. They were replaced at each station. The company owned a total of 118 horses, of which 54 were used for passenger and 54 for freight transport. The journey time was approximately three hours, but depended on the load, the weather and the age of the horses. The passenger and freight cars weighed 20 q, the payload could reach a maximum of 18 q for passengers, and 60 q for goods. The passenger cars of the horse railway, as everywhere in Europe, resembled earlier horse-drawn means of transport, while the freight cars were wooden with two stable axles. The company purchased 20 passenger and 100 freight cars. The trains ran twice a day in both directions. Tickets could be purchased at the Zöldfa Inn in Bratislava (part of the present-day Carlton-Radisson Hotel), from whose courtyard the train departed. The railway operated at maximum prices: exceeding the provisions of the then (first) railway law, passenger fares were set at 15, 10, and 5 krajcárs per mile (first, second, and third class), and freight fares were set at 2 and 2.5 krajcárs per pound and mile. ; The horse-drawn railway operated between Bratislava and Szentgyörgy for 32 years, and between Szentgyörgy and Nagyszombat for 26 years. The horse-drawn railway ran for the last time between Nagyszombat and Szered. It finally ended its operation on October 10, 1872. In May 1873, the first steam locomotive replaced the horse-drawn railway on its railway line. ; The most significant monument of the first horse-drawn railway is the Bratislava station building. It is one of the few such objects in the world that has survived in its original state. It is located on the corner of today's Krizsna and Legionárska streets. It was built in 1839-1840 according to the plans of an unknown architect, in the spirit of empiricism, which is so characteristic of simplicity, proportion, antique forms, the use of the facade tympanum, strict symmetry, simple composition in its mass, blunt-ended towers and shuttered windows. The building, in the construction of which the senior Bratislava master builder Ignác Feiler also probably participated, is reminiscent in many ways of the country castles of the Hungarian nobles. It is one-story, with a central risolite around its main portals, an undecorated tympanum, and risalite wings connected at obtuse angles on both sides. There is a clock in the tall tower on columns hidden in the interior. The wide yard of the station was lined with arched arcades of covered landings. The yard contained smaller factory buildings, stables, a carriage house, warehouses and workshops.