Sounds good, looks impressive, but doesn't work — the railway workers and the passengers may have thought as they waited for the Danube railway ferry at Gombos, Southern Hungary that had been just opened to the public four days earlier. According to contemporary reports, travelers could often read in the waiting rooms of the Keleti Railway Station at Budapest and in the pages of the Budapest Gazette that the railway crossing between Gombos and Erdőd would be out of service for an indefinite period of time, mainly because the Alföld-Fiume Railway Company did not have the money to build a bridge or to complete the railway line to Fiume.
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| The two railway ferries at the Gombos harbor bay |
The Alföld-Fiume railway was originally built to transport Hungarian agricultural products from the Hungarian Great Plains to the country's largest seaport, Fiume/Rijeka, as quickly and efficiently as possible. Its starting point was Nagyvárad/Oradea, but contrary to popular belief and expectations, its terminus was not Fiume but Eszék/Osijek, even though the permits had been obtained by the private company. In the end, however, another railway company was able to build the line to the Adriatic Sea. Due to a lack of funds, construction was repeatedly delayed, and the entire Eszék-Nagyvárad line was not completed in one go, but in five separate sections between 1869 and 1871. The railway line crossed the Tisza river at Algyő via a bridge, but there was not enough money to build another bridge over the Danube, so two steam ferries were put into operation here. The official opening ceremony took place on December 20, 1870, but four days later, the crossing was shut down due to icing on the Danube.
Around 1870, railway ferries were already a well-established means of transport in Europe, mainly used in places where the construction of a railway bridge was difficult for financial and/or geographical reasons. They were used not only for river crossings but also for sea crossings, and in fact, the very first railway ferry was put into operation in the North Sea, connecting Edinburgh-Granton with the port of Burntisland on the north coast across the Firth of Forth in Scotland, and traffic continued on it for a relatively long time between 1850 and 1890.
The ferries between Gombos/Bogojevo and Erdőd/Erdut were designed for smaller volumes of traffic than those operating between the major cities of eastern Scotland, so there was no need for huge ferries capable of carrying 20 cars and designed to withstand sea waves. The designers based their plans on a functioning river ferry in Germany. South of Duisburg on the Rhine, near Rheinhausen, a prototype of the Gombos crossing was already operating. The design of the bays built for the ferries, the method of loading the wagons and carriages, and the size of the ferries (6-9 wagons) were almost identical. The Rheinhausen ferry began operating in 1866, but only functioned for eight years after the first railway bridge was built not far to the north, which was blown up during World War II [1].
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| Old and new ferry crossing between Gombos and Erdőd in 1881. (mapire.eu) |
From a transport geography perspective, there were not many good options for routing the railway line from Szabadka/Subotica to Eszék across the Danube, but the least favorable option was chosen. South of Paks, and even more so south of Szekszárd, the meandering character of the Danube changes slightly, with the stable, gravelly riverbed becoming meandering type, forming an extremely wide floodplain. In 1870, Gemenc, Mohácsi Island, Béda-Karapancsa and Kopácsi rét/Kopački Rit were also part of this extensive wetland area, which stretched eastward to the high banks of the Bácska loess plateau, reaching a width of 20-25 kilometers in places, where it would have been extremely costly to build railway embankments and bridges. Above the mouth of the Drava, this huge floodplain narrowed in only one place enough to allow a bridge to be built: at the eastern end of the Bansko brdo hills, between Kiskőszeg/Batina and Bezdán. Here, with a relatively small detour, it would have been possible to route the railway so that it touched the nearby county seat, Zombor/Sombor, and then turned south and continued towards Eszék with another bridge over the Drava. Presumably, the cost of building the two bridges was the main reason why a less geographically advantageous solution was chosen between Erdőd and Gombos, where two river crossings had to be built at a slightly lower cost, but one of them was only a branch of a Danube island.
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| The steam ferry seen from the Bogojevo side of the Danube (forrás) |
There had been a crossing point on the Danube at Gombos before. Its significance lay in the fact that it was the first river crossing below the mouth of the Drava, between Bačka and Slavonia. Its location was not ideal either, although one of its stations was at the end of the valley directly below the castle in Erdőd, the Gombos ferry inn on the other side was 5.5 kilometers away from the nearest settlement, Bogojevo, which was mainly inhabited by Hungarians. It is interesting that the South Slavic-sounding settlement names usually meant nothing in Bačka, as floods forced residents of different nationalities to move repeatedly, so the neighboring Karavukova, for example, was an authentic Swabian village. In the case of Gombos, the usual Hungarianization of names resulted in a very special situation, as Bogojevo did not regain its original medieval Hungarian name (Boldogasszony-telke) in 1899 (the Serbian distortion of which was Bogojevo), but was named after the Gombos family, who owned the inn at the ferry, in two steps. First, the ferry inn became a railway station, and then the name of the railway station became the name of the settlement.
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| The end of the steep railway track at the foot of the loess hill in Erdőd |
The floodplain wetlands on the left bank at Gombos and the steep loess wall at Erdőd on the Croatian side both made the railway builders' work difficult. This asymmetrical loess plateau, which is very steep in the north but flattens out towards the south, diverts the Danube eastwards at the mouth of the Drava, with its highest points dropping down to the Danube with almost vertical walls, averaging 80-90 meters above the Danube's zero level. It was not possible to build the railway line directly across this ridge, as it would have been extremely expensive and pointless to dig a gorge, for example, so the engineers decided to bypass the high loess walls at the eastern end of the ridge towards Dálya/Dalj and build the track on the flatter southern part.
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| The steam ferries, named Duna and Dráva at Erdőd, with ship mills in the back. |
They took advantage of the fact that there was a large island in the Danube just east of Erdőd, which they simply called Ada, and which was flat enough to build the Croatian terminus of the railway. First, they built a wooden bridge on its branch, which was easily damaged by floods and ice, so they later replaced it with an earth embankment. However, even then, the railway track was still relatively steep, and on several occasions, the carriages running on the steam ferry (the ferry did not carry locomotives, which were attached to the train on the other side of the Danube) arriving from Erdőd at high speed and sliding into the Danube because they were unable to brake the train sufficiently. This problem was only solved in 1881 with the use of scotch blocks [2].
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| The monumental new bridge and the still operating railway ferry. |
However, the Danube proved to be the most formidable opponent for the steam ferry in three respects:
- Current. Since the railway track arrived perpendicular to the banks of the Danube, a solution had to be found to load the wagons onto the steam ferry regardless of the river's current. The current could easily turn the 62-meter-long iron hull and bend the pair of rails leading to it. For this reason, a protected bay was dredged on both banks, where the rails were led into the riverbed, and a sliding, wedge-shaped bridge was used to guide the carriages onto the ferry, sometimes wading into the water up to their axles. At Gombos, on the flatter shore, this bay was more than 300 meters long and wide enough to accommodate both ferries without hindering each other's operation. On their outer sides, iron cables stabilized the hull against the current to prevent them from deviating from their course, and the steam engine mounted on the ferry pulled itself across to the other side with the help of an additional cable tow rope. The question may arise as to whether these cables hindered traffic on the river, but they were so heavy that they normally sank below the water surface, deep enough not to obstruct the traffic of steamboats.
- Icing. When the Danube freezes over, the ferries stop running. Even if they are made of iron. On 1870 Christmas Eve, four days after the ferry's ceremonial opening, traffic came to a halt due to the appearance of ice sheets, which were still a common feature of the Danube landscape at that time. There was not much that could be done if there was ice on the Danube from December to the end of February, as the ferry was unusable during this time, and the weather forecast was not yet advanced enough to tell passengers in advance when rail traffic would resume.
- Water level. Since both stations of the crossing were built on floodplains, it was predictable that traffic would be suspended during floods. However, not only high water levels but also low water levels threatened rail traffic. As the railway line was built in just a few years, it was necessary to wait for the lowest possible water level during those few years so that the tracks could be laid as deep as possible in the bay. However, there was no guarantee that the low water levels that had prevailed during the few years of railway construction would not be exceeded in the future. On December 7, 1871, barely a year after the handover, the water level dropped so low that traffic had to be stopped, but in such cases, at least the time could be spent usefully, e.g., by extending the track toward the riverbed [3].
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| The destruction of the Gombos railway bridge in 1941. (Fortepan) |
These circumstances made rail traffic extremely difficult and unpredictable, and made it impossible to plan the transport of goods and passengers, especially perishable goods. The Alföld–Fiume Railway Company therefore struggled with constant financial difficulties, and Hungarian State Railways (MÁV) eventually purchased the entire company in 1884 and continued to operate the steam ferry until 1911, when the long-awaited railway bridge was built a few dozen meters south of the steam ferry route. This bridge was blown up by Yugoslavia during the German attack in 1941, rebuilt in 1947, and opened to road traffic as well. In 1977, due to increased traffic, a new road bridge was built between Gombos and Erdőd. The long bay for steam ferries on the Gombos side is still visible between the two bridges today.
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| The bridges at Gombos in September 2011. |
The steam ferries named Duna and Dráva operated until the very last moment, until the day the bridge was inaugurated, for a total of four decades. During this time, many different postcards were made of this unique technological feature. However, the fate of the ferries after their retirement is not entirely clear. During the construction of the bridge, several towns applied to take them over, including the aforementioned Kiskőszeg, but they would also have been taken to Kalocsa and Mohács [4]. According to the Hungarian Technical and Transportation Museum, one of the steam ferries was eventually taken to Budapest, and after being fitted with a superstructure, it became the two-story boathouse of the Honvéd Rowing Club on Margaret Island. In the 1980s, it sank in the bay of Népsziget, but in 2015 it was raised, repaired, and turned into two interactive visitor centers showcasing the 2017 World Aquatics Championships and Budapest's Olympic bid. Today, it is moored at Batthyány Square. [5] [6].
However, the Danube did not remain without a railway ferry. From 1953 until 2013, a ferry carried trains between Calafat in Romania and Vidin in Bulgaria until the new Danube bridge was built. But that is another story.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Literature:
[1] https://www.kultushafen-bewahren.de/geschichte/rhein%C3%BCberquerungen/
[2] Békésmegyei Közlöny, 1881-05-26 / 63. szám
[3] Magyar Ujság, 1872-01-10 / 6. szám
[4] Pécsi Napló, 1911-05-17 / 112. szám
[5] https://www.facebook.com/KozlekedesiMuzeum/posts/pfbid0382p1E8JpWLqMhSn2novauyqqEsRzjdrihNv8iswpYRNy8hVK41ihSf5EmF73GqWgl
[6] https://turizmusonline.hu/cikkek/belfold/delvideki_gozkompbol_lett_latogatokozpont_budapesten.html
https://www.hajoregiszter.hu/hajoadatlap/duna/duna/5134/3498
https://timelord.blog.hu/2013/07/10/gozkomp_a_dunan
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