Founded in 1895

Founders: the Magyar ipar- és kereskedelmibank Aktientársaság, Österreichische Eisenbahn Verkehrsanstalt

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Main activity: rail transport

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Author: by Domonkos Csaba

Hungarian railway traffic ltd

Magyar Vasúti Forgalmi Rt was both a company supporting the domestic infrastructure, set up by the Hungarian Industrial and Commercial Bank joint-stock company, and a rail wagon hire company. The founding Hungarian Bank of Industry and Commerce was established by the State for the purpose of industrial development, under the authority of Article XIV of Law No. 1890. The bank invested in a number of companies, one of which was the Hungarian Railway Traffic Ltd, founded in 1895 in partnership with the Österreichische Eisenbahn Verkehrsanstalt.

The Hungarian Railway Traffic Joint Stock Company was originally established with a capital of HUF 1 million.

At the time of the general meeting of 5 December 1896, 3875 of the 9850 shares were held by Ágoston Léderer, 2000 by Róbert Eisner, 1000-1000 by the Austrian wagon hire company ÖEVA and the Wiener Bankverein, 875 by the Hungarian Bank for Industry and Commerce, and the remaining shares were held by private individuals.

The share capital was increased to 5 million crowns in 1900, 6 million crowns in 1908, 8 million crowns in 1911 and 10 million crowns in 1914. Following the end of inflation after the First World War, the company's capital was set at 5 million pence on 16 October 1926. The voting rights were 1 vote for every 25 shares.

At that time, the Hungarian Railway Traffic Company was already essentially owned by the Wiener Bankverein, which acquired a further 5,000 shares in 1900.

The original purpose of the new company was to build, operate and finance railways, and any other activity to stimulate traffic in general. The company's primary activity was the hiring out of railway wagons, and in 1905 the government redeemed the wagon fleets of two private wagon hire companies, the General Waggon Rental Company and the International Waggon Rental Company, and transferred them to MÁV (which had previously used them), which in turn merged them into the Hungarian Local Railway Company.(in many cases, the railway companies did not have, and do not have, a sufficient number of freight wagons, possibly special-purpose wagons such as tank wagons, and they make up for this lack of capacity by hiring wagons from specialised companies).

By the end of 1896, the company already had 750 covered and 250 open wagons, plus 25 other special wagons, and the number of wagons available for hire increased sharply in the following years.

Before the First World War, it already had a number of foreign interests, which, because they were in countries hostile to the Monarchy, it was forced to sell at the outbreak of war. One of these was the wagon hire company l'Ausiliare in Rome, the majority of the shares in which were only bought back in 1930. Before the Second World War, Magyar Vasúti Forgalmi Rt. was the largest wagon hire company in Central Europe, with a total of 1,700 tank wagons in the 1930s. It set up several branches abroad, from Paris to Warsaw. In 1930, for example, the company acquired a large proportion of the Italian tank wagons that had been reserved for years in advance by the various railway companies.

Even at the time of its foundation, its basic activities included the provision of loans for the establishment of warehouses and the storage of goods, but with the amendment of the statutes in 1898, it was also able to enter into a number of other industrial development enterprises, such as the Hungarian Railway Traffic Ltd. in 1899, which was one of the founders of a short-lived car factory, which was liquidated in 1901. The company also played a prominent role in the expansion of tram transport, as it was a major investor in several provincial tram companies in connection with its core business, such as the tram networks of Debrecen, Arad, Oradea and Timisoara. The company was also involved in the construction and operation of electricity networks in municipalities neighbouring the capital, such as Erzsébetfalva and Soroksár. The company also owned several HÉV lines, on which MÁV maintained the traffic.

Between the two world wars, it had several subsidiaries in a wide variety of sectors, including the North Hungarian Quarry and Hungarian Tarmac joint-stock company, which operated the andesite quarry in Tokaj, and the Maria-Zell cable railway.

After the Second World War, the Hungarian Railway Traffic Company was also a significant factor - at that time partly in the Belgian interest - and continued to invest in rural infrastructure, thus playing a decisive role in the relaunch of bus transport in Hungary. From 1949, the plants were taken over by the MÁVAUT National Transport Company, the Debrecen Local Railway was taken over by the municipality in 1950 and the Debrecen-Nyírbátor railway was taken over by MÁV.

Interesting facts

After the Second World War, MVF Rt acquired French buses to start up the bus factory near Debrecen. To hand over the buses, Minister of Transport Ernő Gerő travelled to Debrecen by plane.

Sources

• A forty-five year old plan for the unification of tramcars IMRE BARÁNSZKY-JÓB Urban Transport, 1985 (Vol. 25, No. 1-6)1985-08-01 / No. 4

•  Act XIV of 1890 on state benefits to financial institutions supporting domestic industry
• Ágost Félegyházy - Sándor Lendvay (ed.): Exchange traded securities. Description and explanation of securities listed on the Budapest Stock Exchange 2.
• György Lovász The Hungarian Waggon and Machine Works and an exceptional network of companies at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in: Transport and Technology History Review 2021 (MMKM)

• MNL OL = Hungarian National Archives - National Archives Hungarian Railway Traffic Ltd, Z 1563, Z 1601, Z 1603, Z 1604.