A colourful railroad before it went out of service

Line 76: Diósjenő to Romhány, Hungary

The beginning of the year is always problematic for me as a teacher to find time for writing. Now that we are practically locked down due to the Corona virus it is time to go on a trip in our imagination by a train instead of actually taking one. The best way to stay safe is to stay at home.

If I had to travel in my head then an obvious choice for me was a railway I could not travel on in real life anymore. This post is probably going to get rather sentimental, I hope you do not mind. Some railways I never even had the chance to travel on, some I missed out on before closure due to being obsessed with other things or not believing they were really going to do that. This line is different: I spent a lot of time on this railway and I think I can be content with the number of photos I have of it, also with the interesting events and trains I had captured on it before it was closed in March 2007.
Normally the blog would invite you on some of the most spectacular railway journeys in Europe. Despite the hilly scenery, this line is not a huge spectacle; it may be nice compared to the lowlands that dominate Hungary, but you will not feel the urge to immediately go and walk the railway now that trains are absent.

The area to the North of Budapest is quite hilly, the Duna-Ipoly National park occupies large areas on both banks of the Duna river. The Northern part, called the Börzsöny mountains can easily be reached by train and a number of narrow-gauge railways help getting closer to the more picturesque sceneries. Diósjenő lies at a much lower land, hilly at most, but the view is dominated by the ~900 m tall mountain range. Therefore the branch line leading to the village is rather curvy, following the valley of a long and calm creek, but is served by an hourly periodic timetable as most people living around there go to Vác, the regional centre to work and the train is rather convenient.

The line goes on Northernly to Balassagyarmat, the former capital of Nógrád county, that was replaced by the more industrialized Salgótarján in the Socialist era, but travel times are long, everyone from the town chooses the car or the bus over the train. At Diósjenő, the tiny branch line, just 20 km altogether, to Romhány forks. Opened at 11 July, 1909 by the Duna-Ipolyvölgyi HÉV (Duna-Ipel' valley regional railway), it was mostly relevant because of the natural resources around the line. Before motorisation, the lengthy journey from Romhány to the West at Diósjenő, then the curvy railway to the South until Vác was a nice alternative, but with more direct roads being built and people riding cars to get to Vác quickly sent the railway into a decline.

A few years before its closure the average day of the line was dominated by freight traffic and that was a real treat for railfans. Let's see what a visit to line 76 usually looked like!
You wanted to get to Vác as early as possible, so that you could be at Diósjenő before sunrise. The typical branch line Bzmot train took you on a warm, slow and gentle ride. The train travelled at around 40 kph so it took more than one and a half hours to get from Budapest to Diósjenő, a journey less than 80 km long. Diósjenő was your typical branch line station with low platforms, hand-operated barrier, railwaymen operating the points on both ends, but offered luxurious features like lamps hung above the tracks, a bar with draught beer and the legendary Nógrádi Ropi snack, something you will not find at many provincial railway stations in Hungary.
Trains of the Vác-Balassagyarmat railway always meet at Diósjenő, and there is the third train going for Romhány. Usually, it is Bzmot 241, the most worn-down, rusty railcar you have ever seen. They don't spend time properly repairing the chassis, instead, they just weld a fresh layer of steel above the rust and paint it with some foundation. Still, the railcar's rugged look makes it homely, as one always looks forward to travelling on it.

As the longer Bzmot trainsets pass, finally our single railcar can depart as well. The engine bursts to life, but quickly has to be tuned down: after the road-rail level crossing (and passing the local distillery) the track speed limit of 20 kph kicks in. Bzmot 241 is the featured vehicle here as the cruise control was modified and can be set to 20 kph as well, not just the standard 40-60-80 kph of other railcars.
You can see anglers walking down the road to the Diósjenő lake, a small, artificial reservoir in a lovely, enclosed valley. Not much later the train pulls in to Tolmács depot: the small station has a short loading platform next to the main track and also the small chemical plant of Erdőkémia is connected with a siding. The grassy hills next to the track are ideal for cattle, but the Hungarian State Railways has long before stopped transporting livestock, the loading platform is inaccessible.
The industrial siding is a different matter: they need a single carload of sodium-hydroxide every week, which is being replaced by the local freight train each Monday.

Tolmács village is not really high profile. While some settlements around have many people working at Vác or Budapest, Tolmács is really a village but people around here do not have much income. The landscape is not really nice, we soon arrive at a part of the valley where the view is dominated by the former Soviet military base.
The train pulls in to Rétság, a small, but bustling town, but the station area is not frequented by passengers. The road M2 traverses the middle of the town that offers to reach Vác in 20 minutes by periodic buses; the train only gets to Diósjenő in that time and it's a little bit off the centre; Diósjenő to Vác is almost a further complete hour.
Rétság station is equipped with points moved by springs, trains from Diósjenő always enter track three, trains from Romhány go to track two, and the points can harmlessly be approached from the wrong direction. On the way back, the little railcar is likely to be passing by the freight train on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Leaving Rétság, the train enters a more narrow part of the valley, until it finally arrives at a fork of the creeks and traverses two creeks on steel bridges to arrive at the village of Bánk. The station is high above the village and the landmark lake, though it is barely visible from the train. Parallel our track a 60 cm narrow-gauge railway lies, connecting Bánk to the clay mine of Felsőpetény. Since the time of our fictional journey on the railway, traffic on the mining railway has not only stopped but the track has also been removed so mostly nothing of it remains. The depot and the tracks in the underground mine shafts remained and tourists can sometimes visit it.

The narrow-gauge line arrives at a loading area high above the standard-gauge station so that clay can easily be transferred into the standard-gauge cars. Historically, they mostly ran to Romhány, and partially to other destinations, but I am far too young to have seen any of this operation.
Romhány, the terminus is our next stop; the valley broadens, the hills move further from the track and the view on the town becomes unobstructed. The Prónay family has a nice castle, but it is practically invisible; the view is dominated by the tile and the cockle factories that used to eat all the clay brought up at Felsőpetény.
In the last years of the line, the factories did not operate anymore, however, they generated heavy freight train load. Tiles were shipped in on a train, on a rather lengthy route and with multiple locomotives helping or banking the train because of the heavy terrain, the tiles were unloaded at Romhány and they were distributed around Hungary by lorries. Unfortunately, this operations has long ago ceased too and nowadays the track is impassable.

Two years after the closure the website trains.hu ordered a charter train on the line, that is when some of these photos and this video has been taken. The video also shows the narrow-gauge railway, possibly for the last time being run by a long train.

• If you are interested in additional photos of line 76, click the link