Where the “Blue Danube” Flows.

Most railwaymen are keen radio fans, and probably every reader of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” has at one time or another listened enchanted to the strains of Liszt's “Hungarian Rhapsody,” broadcast from some near or distant station. Few of you, however, will actually have made the trip to the land of Liszt—beautiful Hungary, beside the “Blue Danube.”

Hungary now is making a big bid for tourist business, and the State

Railways are making special efforts to care for the comfort of visitors from abroad. Budapest, the capital, is thirty-two hours distant from London by rail, and a more cosmopolitan city it would indeed be difficult to discover. In addition to being the Hungarian capital, Budapest is also the great railway centre of the land. From here, trunk routes radiate in almost every direction, one route—to the west—leading to Vienna, a run of four-and-a-half hours.

The Budapest-Vienna line is especially interesting, because this route provides Europe's only example of a mainline railway electrified on the phase-converter system. In this system, single-phase current is taken by the locomotive from overhead transmitter at 16,000 volts, 50 cycles, and used to drive a phase-converter, delivering three, four or six-phase current to the driving motor at a voltage of 1,000. Sub-stations are unnecessary under this arrangement, while the locomotives can be fed direct from overhead line at an industrial frequency.