While spring in Budapest is traditionally signaled with BKV buses bursting into flames burning to their axles, this year’s public transit fire season opend with an altogether new and much more exciting twist: a raging inferno in a metro tunnel. Building on a smaller but very promising blaze back in January, yesterday the BKV turned up the voltage with a spectacular fire in an excellent stretch of the M3 line between Lehel tér and Újpest that fully gutted an empty train car, fusing all the cables underneath it and forcing the conductor and some others to flee for their lives.
While we missed the main event, we were fortunate enough to be traveling towards the closed tunnel on the M3 just a short while later, and thus were able to join a large and exhilarated crowd forced to get out at Deák Ferenc tér, though since we only had one more stop to go we didn’t get to see if the replacement bus also went up in smoke. Anyway, exciting! [blikk.hu]
