Children's Railway

It's not often that I get to spend Australian Father's Day with any of my three daughters, as they're usually travelling or living in diverse parts of our planet, but yesterday was the exception!  We decided to ride the Children's Railway located in beautiful forest on the outskirts of Budapest.  The Children's Railway movement seems to have been common in Eastern European countries in times past and consisted of railways, either large miniature, or narrow gauge, effectively run by a sort of children's club under the mentorship of qualified adults, with the aim of teaching good railway practice to young people.  To say I was impressed by this railway and concept would be a understatement!!

But first things first.  There is an extremely good public transport system around Budapest, and we have a weekly pass so can simply hop-on and hop-off as required.  We travelled to the Children's Railway by two of the four Metro lines, then a tram, and finally a cog railway, all included in our weekly ticket.  Here is the cog railway.

The Children's Railway is usually run by several Romanian built, Cat-powered diesels, but apparently steam is available on special occasions, although I didn't see any steam yesterday.  It is 2'6" gauge (or close metric equivalent).  Each train has one open and one closed carriage, and there are at least three trains in use at any one time.  It's a journey of about 45 minutes one way through beautiful forest, with lots of walking tracks evident.  A one way ticket cost 700 Forint, which is about A$3.50, so really excellent value!!  The stations are all a somewhat dated style, but everything is maintained quite well.

It was a really enjoyable journey and would be quite a demanding line to operate through this hilly forest, but the aspect that really impressed me was the Children running it!  They were all in immaculate uniforms, about equal numbers of boys and girls about 10 to 15 years old, and they performed all the operating functions of running the railway under adult supervision, except actually driving the locos.  They even stood at attention and saluted as the train left the station!  In the various hobbies of which I'm a part, it is often mentioned that young people are just not interested in the things that we oldies are, and are largely not taking part.  Perhaps we need to look at why this Children's Railway concept is so successful, and take a leaf out of their book.  Certainly the children were given responsible duties, under the mentorship of the adults, who all seemed to be having a great time too!  

At the end of the line there is a small museum where I bought some postcards, and then we caught a normal tram back to Buda.  Although the language is a small difficulty, overall Budapest is very easy to travel around as a tourist, and I have found the people to be very welcoming and friendly.