Which is older, the London Underground or Budapest Metro?

on that anorak and metal your self for a heated debate. “It’s the oldest underground railway in the world.” That’s a press release you’ll typically hear from locals in Budapest speaking concerning the metropolis’s metro, which opened 125 years in the past in 1896. Not so, say aficionados of the London Underground, it’s demonstrably unfaithful, ours predates it by 33 years. Yet nonetheless the story appears to persist, no less than amongst Hungarians. It’s the oldest on the mainland continent of Europe for certain however even its electrification lagged six years behind the primary electrical line in London. Maybe it’s simply a type of myths from communist propaganda that has hung round. After all, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia insisted for many years that the primary worldwide soccer match was performed by the USSR in 1930, ignoring the previous 58 years of fixtures.

“No, no. It’s not that at all,” argues Zsombor Varga, a educated day by day commuter who’s passing by way of the system’s Astoria station. “It’s because Budapest was built solely as a metro, London wasn’t. The Metropolitan Line was just a railway that happened to run in tunnels at one end but branched out for many kilometres outside. Budapest was never a railway line, always a metro.” His countryman Gabor Molnár disagrees together with his reasoning however nonetheless says Budapest was the primary. “Ours was the first because it was wholly electric. In 1896 London still used steam on parts of the network,” (he’s proper too however now we’re arguing over what defines an underground railway). Is all of it nitpicking? Presumably it is determined by who’s choosing the nits.