Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: mav

Like many big city stations around the world, Keleti is large and monumental, and has a large arched ceiling over the main concourse. It's a beautiful station, underneath all the grime, and the only thing that I dislike about it is that it doesn't appear to have central heating, or at least none which is particularly effective. As a result, I was freezing when I took this.

I took this just because I liked the steam-era look, with what looked like steam heating pipes (for pre-heating trains) leaking steam into the freezing cold air. If I'm wrong on this point, though, please somebody tell me. I don't really know what else it could be.

I noticed that this sleeper train was Russian, although I forget the destination. I think it was Petrograd (St. Petersburg), but I'm not certain. In any case, it's being pulled by a MAV (Hungarian State Railways) Class V63 electric here, which gives it a greater degree of exoticism, although really it's totally normal for sleeper trains to be pulled by the motive power of the railway on which they're running at a given moment. If you can read it in this picture, notice Russian Kryllic lettering and RZD reporting marks on the sleeper.

#1361 is a V43 Class electric, which are quite common on services in and out of Keleti, even if they are indeed quite old at this point. Note that this photo has been retouched, if it looks weird.

I saw this coming from a long way off, but didn't get the classic angle of it bearing down on me, although I regretted it somewhat later, as I never got the number. This Ceske Drahy Class 371 electric was pulling a MAV (Hungarian State Railways) Eurocity from somewhere in Germany to Budapest, via Prague, so it obviously wasn't going to stop in Roztoky, and I wanted to be sure that I got this pan shot. I set my camera up, passed up the offset head-on view, and swung my body around for the pan. It worked perfectly, and now I have this, which may be my best pan shot ever. I hope you like it.

The coaching stock on the Hungaria is usually Hungarian, appropriate to the name, and the Hungarian State Railway, MAV, is truly a throwback to the age of steam when it comes to luxury. This was the diner where I had a very good meal for dirt cheap while rolling through the night towards Berlin. The diner, I should note, is thoroughly modern, and authorized for 200Km/h operation, even if it looks like it was built in the 1930s.