Horse-drawn trains were used previously, but the first horsecar that was meant to function as a means of public transportation started to operate in the Hungarian capital on August 1, 1866; it was the sixth of its kind in Europe, and it ran between Újpest and today’s Kálvin Square. While people of wealth used to ride with their own carriages, others rode the predecessors of modern-day taxis, the horsebus or the omnibus, aka the public carriage. Those who lived on the outskirts of the city used the rudimentary public transportation mostly for recreational purposes, like riding to City Park or the baths. However, it all changed with the arrival of industrialization, when more and more jobs were created in the city; for example, Újpest was founded in 1840, and the workers, craftsmen, and traders who settled there all worked in Pest.
Steam trains seemed like obvious alternatives for transporting passengers, but on the one hand, they filled the streets with smoke, and on the other hand, their noises scared the horses that pulled the nearby carriages. The horse-tram was great for the population, as after it started to operate, the size of Újpest began to grow. Good transportation was important so that more and more people could settle in the cheaper neighborhood, and to bring some life into Lipótváros along Váci Road – which, even though today it’s a thriving area, it was back then mostly a place for factories and mills.
As this year is the 150th anniversary of this event, the Museum of Transportation and the Municipality of Újpest organized an exhibition titled "Horse-tram and BUR-tram". This exhibition also commemorated the fact that 120 years ago, from January 12, 1986, the first trams started to transport passengers in Budapest, taking over the place of the horse-trams that dominated the view of the streets for three decades. The exhibition curator, Sándor Krizsán, shared a lot of interesting facts with us while we talked in the colorful exhibition area of archive photographs, horse equipment, and an old tram carriage. Helping those
who can’t readIn the beginning, traveling on the horse-tram was a big deal; it was steadier, it wasn’t as bumpy as the omnibus or the horsebuses. The horse-drawn carriages went through the city from Kálvin Square, on today’s Múzeum and Károly Boulevard, and then they reached the border of Újpest through Bajcsy-Zsilinszky and Váci Road. This business became more successful than they ever expected, so within a few years horse-trams started to operate towards City Park, Józsefváros Train Station, and Kőbánya, then to the direction of Közvágóhíd through Üllői Road, Orczy Road, Szent István Boulevard, and Vámház Boulevard. On the Buda side, the horse-trams went from Chain Bridge to Óbuda and Zugliget – small, colored flags on the carriages indicated the routes, as many people couldn’t read back then.Commute time: 30 minutes
or 1.5 hours?On July 30, 1866, the day of the opening, journalists traveled aboard the horse-tram, and they reported a suspiciously short journey of 30-35 minutes from Újpest to downtown Pest. This is about the same time as if we would take Metro line M3 on this route. The explanation is that, in the beginning, there was only one track – letting the carriage coming from the opposite direction pass meant a long waiting time. Two decades later, the papers reported more realistic data when they said that it takes about an hour to an hour and a half to get from Nyugati Square to Újpest.
The carriages to Újpest and Kőbánya were double-deckers, with an open balcony on the top, and they could fit up to 50-60 people. The horse-tram wasn’t cheap, and it had a class-system: the more you paid, the better the travel conditions were. Third class tickets cost 10 krajcárs (the divisional coins of the era), and for this price, one had to travel on the balcony on the top, exposed to the weather; for 15 krajcárs, you could get a second-class ticket inside, with leather seats, while you could travel on velvet seats, and carpet under your feet, with a first class ticket for 20 krajcárs. There were various carriages, so sometimes third-class passengers were seated inside. The
children’s favorite and the “spitting box” of RákospalotaIt’s not a modern phenomenon that kids love trains and other sizeable means of transportation – they also adored them in the era of horse-trams. A child’s drawing from 1887 was on display at the exhibition; little Andor Mádai expressed his admiration of horse-drawn carriages with their colorful flags. Old newspaper articles report that it was a huge honor to sit next to the coachman and hold the reins – they looked up to him the way they do now to the engine drivers.
Passenger didn’t really like the carriages that operated between Újpest and Rákospalota; what’s more, they mocked it as the “spitting box” of Rákospalota. A paper called Ujpesti Ellenőr reported in its edition of October 23, 1887, that "...the biggest problem is that one couldn’t sit into that with decent clothes and a good health. Even the ark of our father Noah couldn’t have been more primitive than that; and the entrance of it is usually barricaded by giant baskets, bundles, sacks, geese, ducks, chickens, tools, stove pipes and whatnots, that it’s almost impossible to get on or off." The reason of the chaos on this line was that, while Újpest was famous for its industry, Rákospalota was known for its agriculture: early in the morning, vendors packed up their milk jugs and farm animals and they all headed to town.No smog,
just horse manureUsing horses in transportation had its downside: in our modern world of hygienic dog keeping, we can imagine that the discharge of horses on the streets wasn’t a pleasant sight. As Sándor Krizsán said, back then it was this, and not exhaust fumes, that “polluted” the environment; basically the equation was the same: the horse was the engine, while maintaining the suspension was the shoeing. Sometimes more than a 1,000 horses were out pulling trams at one time, but the number of horses always changed: during the winters, they didn’t use that many carriages, so they sold the weaker horses. Horse-trams needed strong animals, as the carriages with balconies, when filled with passengers, could weigh up to eight tons.
The endMotors became popular in the 1880s, and at the same time, horse-trams started to be considered outdated. From 1895, they started the electrification of the 46.7-kilometer-long tram system of the capital, and the first horseless trams started to operate on May 30, 1896; this year is the 120th anniversary of this event. Passengers were surprised to see the lack of animals – when they first sat into the test-carriages, a lot of them asked after the horses.
The horse-tram tried to keep up with the new electric companies for a while, but the end was inevitable: on June 7, 1898, the last horse-drawn carriage embarked on the road between Széna Square and Déli Railway Station. However, the sight of horses and horse-drawn carriages still determined the view of the streets of Budapest, as automobiles only came into fashion around the middle of the 1900s.
