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.
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 (1834, Copf-style façade and Empire
altar), enlarged after the 1863
cholera epidemic, and the Reformed church (1928), 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
Latticework 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:
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Staufenberg, Germany
-
Dorobanți, Romania
== Gallery ==
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