About this journey

Nagykanizsa station sits at a crossroads of central European rail history, where the Budapest–Murakeresztúr railway — approximately 235 kilometres long, mostly single-tracked and electrified — begins its northward arc toward Lake Balaton. Concessions for the line were granted in 1856 to the private Emperor Franz-Joseph Orient-Railway, with construction beginning the following year. After the firm merged with the Southern Railway Company in 1858, the section connecting to Nagykanizsa opened on 24 April 1860, and the full stretch from Buda to Nagykanizsa followed on 1 April 1861. Principal engineering challenges along the original route included a tunnel at Gellért Hill in Budapest and bridges over the Mur and the Sárviz waterway; the builders even collaborated with the Lake Balaton Company to lower the lake's level in order to protect the trackbed and its foundations.

The line arrives at Siófok, where the first station building was completed in 1863, though trains had called there since 1861. A newer station building replaced it in 1904. The town has six train stations in total, and its 17-kilometre Lake Balaton coastline has made it Hungary's second most popular holiday destination. The journey from Nagykanizsa thus moves from a historic junction town, shaped by mid-nineteenth-century railway ambition, to a lakeside resort whose development was inseparable from the arrival of the railway itself.