CAF USA in Elmira Heights to Add Jobs

CAF USA Elmira Heights plant is named vendor for assembling 29 low floor light rail vehicles for Houston. 100 jobs are expected to be added to the 15 that are there now after the last contract ran out. You can find the information at www.stargazette.com.

Link to the story and summary, please? That link only brought me to their main site.

Ask and receive. I'm sure Adtranz in Hornell will benefit with the O'Bama Bucks too.

http://www.stargazette.com/article/2009 ... /903110327

Alstom is in Hornell not ADtranz.!! If Alstom builds the WAMATA 7000 series they will be junk the same as the 6000 series, they have had nothing but problems with them from the start.
( im sure Alstom will keep up the so called QUALITYwork they do !! ) Not......

CAF has recieved the contract for houston metro something that has been in the works for nearly 6 months. this contract has nothing to do with Obama stimulus this is a contract that is funded by loacal, state, and county govrnment not FED.

The contract for Houston is for 103 cars seating capacity of 50, all flip seats to make room for stadium capacity crouds of 160 persons(standing) cctv and more. 29 was the intial with the option for 28 more but when all was said and done it ended up 103 cars, 5cars in a train and they are the S 70 series.
This will ramp up sometime between about DEC.2009 and March 2010. All cars to be delivered by mid. 2014
Hope this answers your questions

You can find out more about the CAF contract on the houston metro website if you want to check it out

I'm glad to see the Elmira Heights facility getting the Houston work! At the same time I wouldn't say that Alstom doesn't also build quality cars.

WMATA has had issues with most of their contracts lately including the 5K done by CAF. I will say that the 5K would have likely done much better if the project had been built entirely in the Elmira Heights facility, but as it was it was much worse than 6K. The Elmira facility (with whatever name on the gate) has shown the ability to build a quality product if given the opportunity. There is a good pool of skilled workers in the area. They have however had some difficulty meeting schedules most of the time in the past.

On the other hand Alstom is finishing up on their part of the R160 MTA (NYCT) contract. At this point they have built over 700 new cars and have been delivering over 30 cars per month and as many as 40 per month. They should finish up with the remaining 300 or so cars on schedule in the spring of 2010. To top it off the cars are performing well and exceeding MDF requirments. The Elmira facility has never been able to produce new cars at that rate at any quality.

All that said I wish both companies the best of luck. I would like to see the passenger rail industry brought back as a more usable mode of transportation, and at the same time keep employees busy at both facilities. I won't forget Bombardier in Kanona either, but they are not doing much in the lower part of the state yet.

CAFguy wrote:You can find out more about the CAF contract on the houston metro website if you want to check it out

total 113 cars to be built or the houston project.
The contract was pushed back a year and will not begin to ramp up before march of 2011.
the shells will be built in spain and the rest of the car will be assembled in the USA.
They are low floor...each car seats about 50 people, all flip seats to accomidate the stadium capacity standing room.