The importance of building a railway between Budapest and Miskolc was already discussed in the 1830s, but the railway reached Miskolc only with a considerable delay and detour – from the direction of Debrecen – in 1859.
The concession for the construction of the Szolnok-Debrecen railway line was granted to the Tiszavidéki Vasút (TVV) railway company in 1856. Construction progressed rapidly on the flat terrain and the 121 km long section was opened to traffic on 25 November 1857. From Debrecen, the Tiszavidéki Railways expanded northwards, reaching Miskolc in 1859 via Nyíregyháza and Szerencs.
The construction of the Debrecen-Miskolc line has been significantly hampered by disagreements between the city council and the railway company over the location of the railway station. The strained relationship was characterised by the fact that Miskolc, unlike other cities, did not support the construction of the station either with free land or building materials. The inauguration of the ‘Miskolcz’ railway station took place on 24 May 1859, without a festive inauguration ceremony.
In 1860, the line connecting Miskolc with Kassa (now Kosice in Slovakia) was built. A year later, in 1870, the Hatvan-Miskolc line was opened, which significantly shortened the length of the Budapest-Miskolc route compared to the Budapest-Debrecen-Nyíregyháza-Szerencs-Miskolc route, both in time (3.5 hours instead of 12) and in track length (183 km instead of 356 km).
In 1880, the Tiszavidéki Railways was nationalized and merged into the Hungarian State Railways (MÁV). In 1901, the reconstruction of the railway station was already carried out according to the plans of MÁV. Ferenc Pfaff, MÁV’s chief architect, whose name is associated with the design and reconstruction of nearly 40 railway stations in Hungary at that time, designed a new eclectic, English Romantic-style station building. The walls of the two-storey building were finished with brickwork, and the opening frames, cornices and some facade elements were whitewashed. The two sides of the entrance to the passenger hall are dominated by imposing towers.
By the 1940s Miskolc had become a major railway hub and the Tiszai railway station, the marshalling yard and their surroundings suffered one of the largest bombing raids of the Second World War on Hungary’s railway junctions on 2 June 1944. One hundred heavy bombers dropped about 200 tons of bombs in three waves. 420 people were wounded and 206 killed. The buildings of the Tiszai railway station were damaged, the buildings of the marshalling yard were destroyed.
During the decades of communism, the station building deteriorated, and during the renovations and repairs, the monument protection requirements were not met. However, in 2003, the station building was renovated to its original 1901 appearance and at the same time modernised to meet the needs of the time. The three dates on the façade of the building refer to the establishment of the station (1859), the completion of the building designed by Ferenc Pfaff (1901) and the last renovation (2003).
