Construction of the new Transport Museum in Kőbánya is planned to start in the first half of 2027, provided that we receive good bids and the budgetary situation allows the project to be launched. Full completion – including the construction of the permanent exhibition – could take around 3–4 years, the Ministry of Transport and Investment told Turizmus.com.
According to the plans, the existing industrial buildings, some of them heritage-listed, will be developed to create new permanent and temporary exhibition spaces, museum education rooms, visitable collection stores and visible storage, conservation workshops, as well as library and archive spaces and storerooms.
Besides creating new exhibition spaces, the investment could bring together the functions of the Transport Museum that are currently scattered across Budapest.
The institution’s office needs can also be fully met here, and additional visitor-facing and catering facilities will also be included, such as a conference venue, a restaurant and bistro serving visitors and local residents, as well as a café and a museum gift shop. The park surrounding the buildings will become a community green space, where a playground, a garden railway and a water feature will await visitors. The authentic presentation of the listed Cold War shelter on the site is also part of the investment, and the museum will also set up a community vehicle repair workshop – the Turizmus.com reporter was told about the diversity of the project.
What the permanent exhibition will be like
The ministry’s reply also revealed that the new Transport Museum’s permanent exhibition will cover some 12,000 square metres. By comparison, this is more than twice the floor area of the former permanent exhibition in City Park. The features of the diesel hall of the Északi Járműjavító (Northern Vehicle Repair Works) make it possible to display a large number of large historic vehicles in the permanent exhibition, which will present the main social and technical milestones in the history of transport.
Alongside the greatest figures in Hungarian transport history, the permanent exhibition will feature technological innovations and outstanding players of the Hungarian transport industry, such as Ikarus and Ganz, and will present the best of the museum’s collection of objects.
Besides more than a hundred vehicles, there will also be room for smaller objects, such as the museum’s 1:5 scale railway model collection, which is exceptional even by international standards.
“The monumental exhibition offers an experience for all ages, and its interactive and digital solutions bring the history of transport to life,” they said.
“Naturally, model railway layouts will also play an important role in the new Transport Museum. In addition to the permanent exhibition, there will be a larger, flexible exhibition space of around 900 square metres, in which we will organise temporary exhibitions on topical, exciting themes or host travelling exhibitions. Two smaller galleries are also planned,” they said.
The most important objects in the museum’s collection are awaiting the opening of the new building in closed, secure storage; besides the exhibitions, the new building will also mean a significant expansion of storage capacity for both the smaller and the larger items in the collection, such as the railway vehicles.
The other, larger part of the collection is either on loan at exhibitions of other institutions or permanently housed at the exhibition sites of partner institutions. These include the Hungarian Railway History Park, the Aeropark and the Városi Tömegközlekedési Múzeum (Museum of Urban Public Transport) in Szentendre.
An important new development is that, after a long time, a temporary pop-up exhibition has also opened, titled Öveket becsatolni! (Fasten Your Seatbelts!); more information is available here: azeszaki.hu/hu.
Source: Tünde Pintér, Turizmus.com
Photos: Transport Museum Facebook page