Magyar Posta is issuing a promotional personalised stamp to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Kemence Forest Museum Railway. Thirty- five thousand copies of the philatelic novelty made by printing on the label part of the personalised Your Own Stamp were produced by the banknote printing company Pénzjegynyomda. The new issue can be purchased at Filaposta and designated postoffices in Hungary or ordered from Magyar Posta’s online store from 19 September 2025.
The village of Kemence in Pest county is located in the valley of the Ipoly river at the northern foot of the Börzsöny Hills. In the 17th century, the settlement served as the seat of the Hont county for a brief period. In 1910, a 600 mm, narrow-gauge forest railway network opened, starting from the southern end of the village and winding through the valleys of the Börzsöny Hills to Királykút, Rakottyás and Halyagos. Originally, the railway transported timber to the sawmill in Kemence. From the 1960s onwards, the importance of the railway gradually declined. The section in the valley of the Csarna stream, which came into service in 1913, operated until the end of the 1980s. The track was damaged by severe storms and floods in the 1990s.
At the end of that decade, the Association of the Friends of Narrow-Gauge Railways, in cooperation with the forest management company Ipolyerdő Zrt., began work to save and rebuild the railway. As a result, trains were able to start running again on 29 July 2000 on one of the sections. The reconstruction work has continued since then due entirely to the dedication of volunteers. Today, the 4-kilometre-long line between Kemence and Feketevölgy is run by members of the Association of the Friends of Narrow-Gauge Railways who work with devotion and perseverance on a voluntary basis to ensure that a piece of the past remains a living reality for posterity.
In 2000, two MD-40 locomotives and a few open passenger coaches began operating again from Kemence and, since then, the service has been expanded with a number of diesel locomotives and converted coaches. The Association of the Friends of Narrow- Gauge Railways, in cooperation with the Transport Museum, restored the steam locomotive “Triglav”, which was built in 1902 under serial number 4713 at the Krauss factory in Munich. The locomotive returned to service at Kemence in 2023.
The label of the stamp shows “Triglav”, the only remaining 600 mm gauge steam locomotive in Hungary. The end station and museum of the Kemence Forest Museum Railway, as well as a map of the section of the railway in operation today are shown on the first day cover. The imprint of the special postmark on the first day cover shows an MD-40, one of the line’s characteristic locomotives.
