Siemens + Bombardier; Impact

Mhmm, FreightCarAmerica (née Bethlehem Steel Freight Car), American Car & Foundry, American Railcar Industries (an ACF spinoff), Greenbrier, Trinity, and Union Tank Car are all still around and building rolling stock. None has expressed interest in building passenger cars, though some of them have direct (ACF) or indirect (Greenbrier, Trinity, ARI) experience building them some decades ago. There's also Vertex, but they are majority-owned by CRRC as best as I can tell.

A lot of companies like that, have sold off their passenger business and have contract clauses prohibiting them from re-using the technology they sold .

ACF has been out of the passenger equipment industry since January 1961 with the last of NYCT's IRT R28s delivered from Berwick. Regardless, it is the last of the major American passenger coachbuilders (ACF, Pullman, Budd, St. Louis, Brill, Osgood-Bradley) still standing.

mtuandrew wrote:There's also Vertex, but they are majority-owned by CRRC as best as I can tell.

Even Budd was a wholly owned subsidiary of Thyssen (ThyssenKrupp, AG) in its later years. The German parent company began phasing out Budd's rail division in favor of its core steel fabrication and automotive manufacturing (chassis, frames, stamping, sheetmetal, car bodies) operations.

ngotwalt wrote:There are still North American builders, they just don't build passenger cars. Having said that, if I am not mistaken, Bombardier wants out of the rail business in the worst possible way to focus on jet skis or something like that. Also lets not forget what is probably their finest piece of Bombardier built equipment out there, the Superliner IIs.
Cheers,
Nick

Bombardier are still pretty big in the UK, they've built a lot of new stock in the last few years and still have a lot of orders (eg 630 cars for the Crossrail project and 180 carsfor London Overground), although they do seem to have lost a bit of ground recently. Mind you every time they don't win a contract they play the 'we're going to have to close the factory and make loads of people redundant' card.

ngotwalt wrote:There are still North American builders, they just don't build passenger cars. Having said that, if I am not mistaken, Bombardier wants out of the rail business in the worst possible way to focus on jet skis or something like that. Also lets not forget what is probably their finest piece of Bombardier built equipment out there, the Superliner IIs.
Cheers,
Nick

Bombardier is stuck with various aerospace money pits (C-Series and two business jet brands).

Bombardier is only in the Rail and Plane business - the jet skis, etc. were were sold off in 2003 and operate as Bombardier Recreational Products

The TTC streetcar contract continues to be a significant problem for Bombardier with the small number of delivered units falling far short of required reliability targets, and earlier this month an indication from Bombardier that they were unlikely to meet their umpteen times revised target for deliveries this year. They have only managed to deliver 40 units so far (a timetable agreed to in 2012 should have had 130 delivered by now), yet still claim all 204 will be delivered by the original 2019 deadline.

In addition to the TTC woes, there is also a contract with Metrolinx for streetcars for other projects in Toronto and surrounding areas, with the Metrolinx recently putting a rush order in with Alstom due to issues alleged in the delivery targets for that order and Metrolinx needing something to run when the new Eglinton line opens. (the Metrolinx deal was for 162 vehicles with 2 pilot vehicles to have been delivered in 2015, so far no vehicles have been delivered for this order with both sides pointing fingers).

Regarding the competition concerns and the idea that Siemens would be taking over, recent articles indicate otherwise. To try and avoid European issues they have come up with a plan that would see joint partnerships with Siemens taking the lead on signalling and Bombardier taking the lead on vehicles, with perhaps some selling of high speed rail products. Thus Bombardier would be left in charge of the combined rail division.

I took a Bombardier Canadair Regional Jet once (on the short lived Skybus - about $15 each way). The intercom alert tone was identical to the MBTA Bombardier coaches, so there was at least one common part. It felt like a commuter service!