by DoDo
Thu Mar 8th, 2007 at 04:05:50 AM EST
Last Saturday, I had to dismount a satellite dish on a relative's house – great fun when you have near-zero technician's knowledge, especially when you have strong wind and rain up on the roof (sorry no photo).
But Sunday, that was the first day of the real spring (we already had flowers in freak January). Perfect weather for repeating a short round-trip on rail and foot my late grandfather took me on when I was small...
Refurbished Czechoslovak-built railbus Bzmot 243 arrives in Szokolya station
More great train-blogging from DoDo - afew
The first leg of the trip is on the mainline to the village Kismaros. There, the single-car train of a narrow-gauge railway (schedule) was stopped extra for our late mainline train. With a maximum speed of 25 km/h yet violently shaking right and left, we travelled on it until Szokolya-Mányoki station.
Standard narrow-gauge diesel Mk 48 2031 leaves Szokolya-Mányoki, continuing its journey to end station and tourist centre Királyrét
The fast-moving clouds produced fantastic lights. On we walked across the village Szokolya...
...and then on the half-hour walk across the hill to a standard-gauge branch-line...
The grass just began to grow again, and the cows already graze on the hillside. On the horizon to the right, the Csóványos (938 m), highest peak of the Börzsöny mountains, part of what was the crater rim of a Vesuve-sized volcano 14 million years ago
The branch-line station, far from the village in a narrow valley covered by forests, is kept alive & busy by a military fuel depot. Surprisingly, the train arrived on-time by the minute.
On a line that barely saw track renewal since construction a century ago, we rumbled onward with a maximum speed of 40 km/h, at places even less, until Magyarkút-Verőce station. The station itself with its old infrastructure is picturesque, but I could only catch the end of the departing train on the road crossing, around which no pole stands straight:
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Check the Train Blogging index page for a (hopefully) complete list of ET diaries and stories related to railways and trains.
