Search results

By the start of World War I the railway networks of developed and moderately developed European countries had mostly been completed. In contrast, a common feature of the recently reborn Poland (founded on the territories previously belonging to Germany, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire) and the Kingdom of SHS/Yugoslavia (which was synthesized from half-dozen entities, primarily inhabited by southern Slays) was that their railway networks were significantly growing during the interwar period and also in the decades following 1945. They were also outstanding in drastically reducing their networks in the 1960s and 1970s. This article explores the causes of two states' characteristic railway policies and their impact factors. The author draws attention to the fact that hard and soft dictatorships had radically different views on the necessity of eliminating unprofitable railway branch lines.

The growth of the weight of East Asia and Southeast Asia (hereinafter: the Far East) in the world economy seems unstoppable. For this macro-region, which is becoming the number one economic centre of the world, Europe is the second largest trade partner after North America. Due to its specific production culture and scarce natural resources, the procurement and trade sales markets of the Far East are mostly different geographically (also by continents). This short paper is only an examination of what are the natural, economic, political and logistical criteria of the goods transportation between the Far East, a region more and more appreciated in the foreign trade of Hungary and Europe on both traditional and newly created routes. For Hungary, a landlocked country, it does matter what routes can offer transportation, which is the most favourable from economic aspects and also the most reliable. In our paper, besides the analysis of infrastructure and goods flows in the Western Europe/EU/Far East relations, we also outline the possible directions and means of Hungary's joining the trans-Eurasian land and combined (sea/land) routes.