MÁVAG

Defunct Hungarian rail vehicle manufacturer

MÁVAG (Magyar Királyi Állami Vas , Acél és Gépgyárak; Hungarian Royal State Iron, Steel and Machine Factories) was the largest Hungarian rail vehicle producer. MÁVAG company was the second largest industrial enterprise after the Manfréd Weiss Steel and Metal Works in the Hungarian half of the Austro Hungarian Monarchy. MÁVAG was the property of the Kingdom of Hungary. After World War II MÁVAG was nationalized, and "Királyi" ("Royal") was removed from its name. The company employed thousands of workers. The buildings were in the VIII. district of Budapest, bordered by the following streets: Kőbányai street, Hungária avenue, Vajda Péter street, and Orczy street. It was the most important Hungarian machine factory in the 19th century, along with Csepel Művek (Csepel Factories). The most respected products of MÁVAG were steam locomotives. The first was produced in 1873, and MÁVAG produced the famous locomotive no. 424 from 1924. MÁVAG's neighbouring company was the Ganz motor és vagongyár (Ganz engine and wagon factory), which manufactured diesel locomotives and luxury carriages for export. In 1959 MÁVAG merged with the Ganz company and was renamed Ganz MÁVAG.

Construction of Hungary's first railway line began in the second half of 1844. It is said that this was the first time that a steam locomotive was used on the completed line between Pest and Rákospalota, and later between Pest and Vác. The opening ceremony took place on 15 July 1846. The two predecessors of the Kőbányai út Machine Works were the Hungarian Belgian Machine and Drive Building Company, founded in 1868, and the Hungarian Swiss Railway Carriage Works, established on the site of the Northern Vehicle Repair Works. The latter company built the majority of the traction vehicles for the Alföld Fiume Railway. However, by 1870 both companies had gone bankrupt and were liquidated. The two plants were purchased by the Hungarian state and placed under joint control on August 1, 1870. The state founded the Machinery and Wagon Factory of the Hungarian Royal Railways and first handed it over to the management of MÁV, before establishing its own board. The first director of the factory was Frigyes Zimmermann. After the Austro Hungarian compromise of 1867, the legal obstacles of the development of national industry were eliminated, and the export of the locomotives became available. Corporate (private) railways have grown, which, along with MÁV, demanded a large number of locomotives and wagons. The factory started production of vehicles in 1872, the first of which was the first domestic production III of 50 coke trucks and according to the plans of the Sigl factory in Vienna. class (later 335 series) freight train steamer in 1873, which was presented at the Vienna World Exhibition that year. Due to the global economic crisis, the company was temporarily reassigned to MÁV. On July 28, 1873, the building of the former Hungarian Swiss Wagon Factory burnt down. It was rebuilt and turned into MÁV's main workshop (→ North Main Workshop). The factory's first proprietary designed locomotive, number 7, was completed in 1878. The company produced a C axis universal locomotive, the "Szolnok", for the Tiszavidék Vasút (later became the MÁV IIId). It was given the 314 series mark, and was introduced at the Paris World Expo the same year. In 1877, the factory started to produce agricultural machinery and threshing machines. In 1880, the Hungarian government merged the factory with the Diósgyőr Ironworks and established a joint management company under the name "Hungarian Royal State Railways Machine Factory and Diósgyőr Hungarian Royal Iron and Steel Factory Directorate, Budapest". In 1881, the factory was able to build larger bridges and built several bridges for the MÁV and Kassa Oderberg Railways, as well as the iron structure of the Keleti Railway Station. The factory was taken over by Zsigmond Kordina in June 1881. The first truly remarkable domestic developed locomotive was the 1883 10th, MÁV class Ia, and later the 220 Series locomotive. In the same year, the first composite locomotive of the factory was completed, MÁV Class 56, 568, and later in the series 20, which was the 75th finished steamer of the factory. Starting in 1884, the company was managed directly by the ministry of commerce. The director of the factory became Nándor Förster in 1890, the year the mill's threshing machine was completed. The factory's 500th steam locomotive is number 28, at MÁV IIIe. Class 2535 (later 326 series) locomotives were handed over on May 31, 1893. The thousandth locomotive, MÁV Int., Number 31, has a 468 track (222 series) locomotive was completed in 1896 and presented at the Millennium Exhibition. In 1896, the factory made the steel structure of the Újpest railway bridge and the Ferencz József bridge (today: Freedom Bridge). In 1896, when Hungary celebrated the 1000th anniversary of Hungarian settlement, the 1000th locomotive was exhibited. The 1500th locomotive of the factory was built in 1900, Il. class 701 psz. (201/202 series), which is IVd of Structure 46. Class 4405 (422 Series) and Transylvanian Mining Route with Govasdia Narrow Gauge Locomotive won the Grand Prix of the Paris World Expo, similarly to the plant's harvesting and threshing machines and locomotives. From 1900, Károly Vajkay, director of the ironworks, and from 1903 Pál Róth became the director of the Ironworks.

In the late 1920s, MÁVAG also became involved in car production. MÁVAG first attempted to produce passenger cars in 1928 1929, when they started to produce the MÁVAG Mercedes L1000 chassis under an agreement with Daimler Benz in Stuttgart. The chassis were fitted with a body for passenger cars, ambulances and minibuses. A series of 20 chassis was produced. [2]

After MÁG stopped producing passenger cars in 1930, the ageing of the taxi fleet became a growing problem during the 1930s. The start of taxi production was also helped by a licensing agreement signed in 1937 with the Cologne based Ford Werke company on the initiative of István Horthy, the general manager of MÁVAG, under which MÁVAG began assembling the Eifel and V8 models for use as taxis in Hungary around 1938. The cars are usually referred to as "MÁVAG Ford". [3] Assembly of the Ford V8 model soon began at MÁVAG's factory on Steinbánya Road. In 1937, 120 of these were built for Autótaxi Rt. However, the Ford V8 model with the V 8 engine was more in the luxury class and was not suitable for taxis. Subsequently, the production and domestic assembly of the much cheaper four cylinder Ford Eifel model began. The size of the small car was too small and the two door design was not an advantage. Although the Eifel models were modified in Hungary (lengthening the wheelbase) to improve passenger comfort, the car was not structurally suitable[4] and the shortcomings of Hungarian technology were revealed in the conversion of the Ford Eifel: the Eifel taxis broke their propeller shafts on the first day and had to be returned to the factory. The smaller Eifel model produced 40 standard and 120 taxis, the larger V8 produced 30 standard and 110 taxis until the changeover to military production. In 1938, 237 MÁVAG Fords were produced, of which 120 were Ford Eifel and 117 Ford V8. This was the end of the MÁVAG Ford story.

During the Second World War, MÁVAG, together with Weiss Manfréd Steel and Metal Works, became the most important military factory in the country. MÁVAG delivered 82 Toldi light tanks in 1938 1939, 59 Turán medium tanks and 135 Nimród self propelled guns in 1940 1941, and 6 Zrínyi assault guns in 1944. The company was also involved in the production of road vehicles: until 1944, 1,337 Botond all terrain vehicles, 1,853 trucks of various LO types and bus chassis were produced. As part of the Győr programme, the production of steam locomotives also increased: by 1944, 218 steam locomotives had been built, most of them 424s. Locomotive boilers were also made to German orders, but at that time the factory could not produce welded boilers of sufficient quality, so only 25 were delivered. The aircraft factory, established under István Horthy, started production in 1939, initially producing the WM 21 Sólyom and M 25 Nebuló, then the MÁVAG Héja from 1942 and Arado Ar 96 from 1943. The factory ceased production at the end of December 1944, during the Siege of Budapest. At this time, the bridge department was responsible for the manufacture of the iron structures for the bridges on the newly built Szeretfalva Déda railway line.

After the Second World War, Hungary has to pay substantial war reparations to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. A significant part of this was the supply of railway rolling stock, under which MÁVAG delivered 525 locomotives and locomotive parts over a period of five years. This mainly involved the production of standard gauge locomotives No. 122 (the same as the 424 series) (or wide for the Soviet Union), standard gauge locomotives No. 110 (the same as the 375 series) and narrow gauge locomotives No. 70 (the same as the 490 series), but soon afterwards the production of the ЭР series No. 135 was started on the basis of Soviet designs. This became the largest type built by the factory: 1 350 units of the type were built, with the exception of five for the 'big brother'. After the completion of the reparation deliveries, production of the types produced up to that time resumed, now under commercial contracts. The КВ4 series of narrow track locomotives were also built to Soviet designs. The main task of the factory's bridge department was to rebuild bridges destroyed in the war. The factory also made significant deliveries of road vehicles in the second half of the 1940s: 350 Tr5 (so called "trambus") motor chassis, 95 N5 chassis and 162 B5 trucks. The agricultural machinery division supplied hundreds of T20 and T35 tractors. These products were later transferred centrally to other factories (Csepel Autó and the former Hofherr). Hundreds of locomotives were also produced for the Soviet Union, partly as reparations and partly under commercial contracts. During this period, the needs of MÁV were very much behind. Work began during the war, but it was not until 1951 that the last locomotive of the factory's own design was built, the heavy high speed locomotive No. 130, which was given the serial number 303 by MÁV. Locomotive No. 303,001 was MÁVAG's 6000th factory locomotive. Only 2 of this type were built, while the 1'E axle layout freight locomotives and 2'D2' axle layout local passenger locomotives based on the 424 series boiler, as well as a E axle layout shunting steam locomotive, were not built at all, on the grounds that they had to be replaced by diesel locomotives. This decision may be considered premature in today's terms, as the development of diesel and electric locomotives was very slow and this caused a serious shortage of traction vehicles at MÁV by the 1960s. MÁV was only able to obtain new steam locomotives in significant quantities from 1955 onwards, and these were the long established 424 and 375 series steam locomotives. The production of the former type was completed in 1958, while the last steam locomotive produced in Hungary, No. 7578, No. 375,1032, left the factory in March 1959, under a new name and organisation (see below). The factory's first post war electric locomotive was a five axle phase and frequency converter locomotive, factory type VM10, of which 12 were built between 1950 and 1957. Mainly due to the backwardness of the back engineering industry, they were built with a constant delay and operated with low reliability. A type programme was developed for the design of diesel locomotives. The first of the 600 hp, heavy shunting and light line diesel electric locomotives of the DVM2 factory type was completed in cooperation with the Ganz factory by the end of 1954 and was given the track number M424,5001 at MÁV. This type was produced from 195 onwards under the serial number M44 and was a great success. The first of the 450 hp diesel hydraulic shunting locomotives, designated DHM1, was completed for the Egyptian railways in 1957. This type initially caused a lot of headaches and even a loss of prestige for the two factories because of the diesel engines' faults. Even worse was the only heavy main line locomotive, the M601 series, also built in 1957, which was never put into series production because of the diesel engine. Since the industrial policy of the time decided to discontinue steam locomotive production and to develop diesel locomotive production vigorously, it did not seem advisable to operate the MÁVAG plant, which produced the vehicle structure, and the Ganz plant, which had been nationalised in the meantime and was responsible for the mechanical equipment, as separate entities, and thus to merge the two plants, which were already located in close proximity to each other: thus, from 1 January 1959, the two plants continued to operate as one company under the name Ganz MÁVAG Locomotive, Wagon and Machine Works.