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On Friday, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and Progress Rail Services Corp. officials announced Progress Rail plans to create a locomotive manufacturing facility in Muncie. The company expects to operate the facility through a new subsidiary.

A Caterpillar Inc. subsidiary, Progress Rail plans to spend about $50 million to open the assembly plant — the first locomotive assembly facility in the United States in many years — sometime in 2012, according to the company. The plant will be established in a 740,000 square-foot facility formerly occupied by ABB Power T&D Co., which closed in 1998.  Progress Rail plans to build a locomotive test track on the facility's 75-acre campus.

The plant will serve the diesel-electric locomotive market and position Progress Rail to pursue transit-rail business, company officials said in a prepared statement. In addition, the “state-of-the-art facility” will enable Progress Rail to better serve its customers, said President and Chief Executive Officer Billy Ainsworth.

Founded in 1983, Progress Rail manufactures, repairs and refurbishes freight cars, locomotives and track for Class Is, short lines, passenger railroads and private car owners. The company operates more than 130 facilities in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. In August, Progress Rail acquired Electro-Motive Diesel Inc.