Pusztaszabolcs


Pusztaszabolcs is a town in Fejér County, Hungary. Flanked by the loess fields of the Mezőföld and the Danube back-swamps, Pusztaszabolcs occupies at the junction of three main railway corridors—Budapest–Pécs, Székesfehérvár–Paks and the freight cut-off to Dunaújváros.
WWW pusztaszabolcs.hu

History

Although first attested as Zabolch in a 1270 charter, the modern settlement coalesced only after 1861, when the Southern State Railway opened a station on the freshly laid Budapest–Zimony line; within a decade trackside plots were selling for twice the price of the surrounding cropland. Rail employment, grain warehousing and a sugar-beet press boosted head-count from 642 in 1870 to 5,904 by 2015, and the 2022 census records a further rise to 6,134 residents, two-thirds of whom commute daily to Dunaújváros steelworks or Székesfehérvár electronics plants.

Landmarks

The town centre is anchored by two contrasting churches: the single-nave Roman Catholic Church of the Visitation, enlarged after the 1863 cholera epidemic, and the Reformed church, whose square brick tower mirrors inter-war Calvinist architecture across Fejér. Between them stands a First-World-War stele by sculptor Lajos Berán, while the small open-air railway museum beside the station preserves a 1942-built MÁV 375 steam locomotive—a type once synonymous with branch-line traffic in Transdanubia. An autumn railway open-house forms part of the town's annual event calendar.

Transport

Since 2018 the municipality has capitalised on its transport node: an EU-funded project electrified and doubled 55 km of track between Pusztaszabolcs and Százhalombatta, replaced the century-old lattice footbridge with lifts and glazed walkways, and built a 300-space park-and-ride intended to shift commuter traffic off Highway 6. Parallel investments laid a 23-km cycleway that ties the town into the Lake Velence loop and the Danube EuroVelo 6 spur.

Twin towns – sister cities

Pusztaszabolcs is twinned with: