Rail supplier news from Siemens Mobility and Voith Turbo (Aug. 24)

Siemens Mobility yesterday broke ground on a $220 million advanced manufacturing and rail services facility in Lexington, North Carolina. Announced in March, the passenger-coach manufacturing plant, as well as its locomotive and coach overhaul facility, will be built on a 200-acre site with room for expansion. When operations begin in 2024, the facility will feature some of the same technologies found at the Siemens manufacturing plant in Sacramento, California, including robotic welding, 3D printing and virtual-reality welder training. In addition, when fully operational, the facility will be carbon neutral, according to a Siemens press release.

Voith Turbo North America has broken ground on a $5 million expansion of its workshop in York, Pennsylvania. The addition of 10,000 square feet to the existing 69,700-square-foot facility will increase the group division’s American manufacturing capabilities. Although the company is seeing manufacturing growth from many customer markets, the main growth area is related to rail. As a result of the expansion, Voith Turbo’s rail operations at the York workshop will transition from a mostly service-based disassembly and reassembly business to new business manufacturing. The location will be designed to support higher volume rail products such as gear boxes and couplers, according to a company press release.