Floby is a
locality situated in
Falköping Municipality,
Västra Götaland County,
Sweden
Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...
. It had 1,499 inhabitants in 2010.
History
In 1858 the first portion of the railway line connecting
Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
and
Gothenburg
Gothenburg (; abbreviated Gbg; sv, Göteborg ) is the second-largest city in Sweden, fifth-largest in the Nordic countries, and capital of the Västra Götaland County. It is situated by the Kattegat, on the west coast of Sweden, and has ...
was opened, and a railway station was opened in the parish of Floby, near the border of the neighboring parish of . The station was first called Sörby, but in 1912 the name was changed to Floby.
A village with industries and services began to grow, and it had a status of municipality from 1923 to 1961. With the municipality reform of 1952, Floby became the administrative center of the Municipality of
Vilske, which was amalgamated into
Falköping Municipality in 1974.
After the railway station was shut down and the municipal functions were centralized in Falköping, Floby began to regress beginning in the middle of the 1970s, with reduced service and population. This backwards progress seems to have stopped in conjunction with the restoration of the train connection in 2003, when Floby became a stopping place for regional train lines.
Floby's largest business is Volvo Personvagnar AB (Volvo Car Corporation) with 500 employees, which manufactures disc brakes, hub modules, and connecting rods for the vehicle industry, and Autokaross i Floby, Inc. (with 80 employees). Many people commute to these industries from other nearby locations, but many of Floby's inhabitants commute to other locations, most commonly to Falköping.
References
Populated places in Västra Götaland County
Populated places in Falköping Municipality
{{VästraGötaland-geo-stub