free of charge.Each year FEDECRAIL organises an international conference on subjects important to heritage railways and railway museums and to foster mutual contacts and cooperation between its members. These conferences are targeted mainly at persons playing an active role in museum and tourist railways, railway museums, locomotive and rolling stock groups, national federations and other railway heritage bodies. Others with broader interests in railway heritage are also welcome to attend.
Preparations are now well under way for next year’s Fedecrail conference in Budapest hosted by the Fedecrail Hungarian member, MAV Nosztalgia (the heritage and historic trains “arm” of Hungarian state railways). The programme will include visits to a wide range of railways and museums (and travel by historic trams in both Budapest and Szeged). The programme will start with late-afternoon tours of the MAV Nosztalgia Hungarian Railway Heritage Park on the Thursday followed by the opening reception and a dinner in the Museum’s roundhouse. One of the museums we will visit, during the Tuesday 27.4 programme, the “Skansen” at Szentendre, has been featured in an article in the September issue of the UK magazine Today’s Railways Europe.
Conference themes will include economic impact surveys to provide evidence of the value of heritage railways and museums to local economies and also bringing a new generation into the historic railway and tramway movement, featuring the expanding Fedecrail Youth Exchange programme and the well-known Children’s Railway in Budapest (which will also feature in the visit programme on Sunday 25.4).
On the Saturday 24.4, participants will travel in reserved coaches on an MAV Nosztalgia historic excursion for a day visit across the border to a special railway event at Kosice in Slovakia. Continuation of the business sessions and the Fedecrail General Assembly will on this occasion be on the Sunday 25.4 morning.
The last day of the programme Wednesday 28.4 will take us to southern Hungary via the “Bugacpuszta” narrow-gauge line at Kecskemet to the attractive city of Szeged where activities will include travel on heritage trams. Participants will have the option of staying overnight (to facilitate continuation for a proposed post-conference visit to Serbia) or, if preferred, returning in the evening to Budapest.
Travel advice for those wishing to participate in the full Fedecrail programme will be to aim for arrival in Budapest by midday on Thursday 22.4 and start return journeys on Thursday 29.4 (afternoon or evening flights if staying Wednesday night at Szeged).
With help from our hosts, good progress has been made with both planning and pricing of the elements of the conference programme. As a result, it is envisaged that the full programme details and booking forms will be available for circulation earlier than in previous years - the conference team are working to an early December 2009 electronic mailshot to members, Friends and other previous participants. This also reflects a need to make hotel bookings earlier as we will be in Budapest at the spring “peak conference season”.
Further enquiries about the programme, bookings or participation may be send by email or addressed by phone or letter to the conference organiser.
TopFEDECRAIL's previous conferences are listed below. Conference papers from the latest conference will not be loaded to this site. They are only made available to conference delegates, or for purchase from the Newsletter Editor. Papaers from old conferences will be loaded to this site when available in electronic form.
Further conference papers may be ordered as paper copy. The order form can be obtained here.
To read the documents requires an Acrobat Reader software on the computer. This may be downloaded here free of charge.