GE Transportation Expands Manufacturing in Grove City
$35 million investment will establish new remanufacturing facility
Will create up to 150 new jobs by early 2013
Additional $37 million in manufacturing upgrades to existing facility
Railroad Forums
GE Transportation Expands Manufacturing in Grove City
- Discussion of General Electric locomotive technology. Current official information can be found here: www.getransportation.com.
From Bloomberg Business Week:
Bloomberg Business Week wrote:General Electric Co. plans to spend $72 million to add a diesel-engine plant and upgrade another in Grove City, Pennsylvania, meeting demand for locomotives.Good news for Grove City! Read more at: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-1 ... lants.html
GE, the world’s largest maker of diesel locomotives, will lay out $35 million to build the new plant, according to a statement today. The factory will begin production by the end of 2012 and create 150 jobs by early 2013, the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company said. GE is also spending $37 million this year and next on the upgrade of a 40-year-old facility.
Demand for the remanufacture of engines is being driven by locomotive overhauls and the need to comply with more-stringent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency emission standards for diesel engines that take effect in 2013, GE said.
MEC407
Moderator:
Pan Am Railways — Boston & Maine/Maine Central — Delaware & Hudson
Central Maine & Quebec/Montreal, Maine & Atlantic/Bangor & Aroostook
Providence & Worcester — New England — GE Locomotives
Moderator:
Pan Am Railways — Boston & Maine/Maine Central — Delaware & Hudson
Central Maine & Quebec/Montreal, Maine & Atlantic/Bangor & Aroostook
Providence & Worcester — New England — GE Locomotives
This increases my confidence that the GE locomotives built at the new plant in Texas will have engines from Grove City-- something I would have been willing to bet on before, but I'd take longer odds now.
From GoErie.com:
GoErie.com wrote:Nothing lasts forever. That includes the hefty 12-cylinder diesel engine that powers GE Transportation's Evolution locomotives.Read more at: http://www.goerie.com/article/20120205/ ... -future%3F
The 4,400-hp engine, designed to last more than 20 years, is also designed to go back to the factory every seven years for an extensive overhaul.
That's part of the reason GE Transportation recently announced plans to invest $72 million in two Grove City engine plants.
Until recently, the task of rebuilding the company's fastest-selling engine, introduced in 2005, has been a manageable one, performed in the same Grove City factory where the new ones are built.
But with the first of the Evolution engines nearing the seven-year mark, that's about to change, prompting the company to announce recently that it will expand and add 150 workers.
MEC407
Moderator:
Pan Am Railways — Boston & Maine/Maine Central — Delaware & Hudson
Central Maine & Quebec/Montreal, Maine & Atlantic/Bangor & Aroostook
Providence & Worcester — New England — GE Locomotives
Moderator:
Pan Am Railways — Boston & Maine/Maine Central — Delaware & Hudson
Central Maine & Quebec/Montreal, Maine & Atlantic/Bangor & Aroostook
Providence & Worcester — New England — GE Locomotives
Does this mean that they have to unit exchange the engine or is it just recommended. The railroads are the original do-it-yourselfers and they won't be too happy about this and it will figure in the cost of ownership verses EMD. I suppose GE has designed the perfect locomotive where in 20 years it will collapse in a pile of scrap that can be swept into a dumpster and can then be replaced with a new one.
Occasionally bits of technicalinformation come through! The article about the expansion of GE's Grove City operations says that the 12-cylinder GEVO weighs 21 tons. I don't think I've seen that figure posted before.
RickRackstop wrote:The railroads are the original do-it-yourselfers and they won't be too happy about this...What's to not be happy about? They had to have known about it when they signed on the dotted line to order the locomotives. You don't spend hundreds of millions of dollars on new equipment without knowing stuff like that ahead of time. It's not as if GE is just springing this news on the railroads all of a sudden.
MEC407
Moderator:
Pan Am Railways — Boston & Maine/Maine Central — Delaware & Hudson
Central Maine & Quebec/Montreal, Maine & Atlantic/Bangor & Aroostook
Providence & Worcester — New England — GE Locomotives
Moderator:
Pan Am Railways — Boston & Maine/Maine Central — Delaware & Hudson
Central Maine & Quebec/Montreal, Maine & Atlantic/Bangor & Aroostook
Providence & Worcester — New England — GE Locomotives
If you paid for a service or maintenance contract for your car, would you do the work yourself? Same thing applies here. This isn't the least bit different than what has been going on for many, many years with the FDLs that were in locomotives under service contracts.
That's what I was thinking. Santa Fe, for example, had a GE maintenance contract on their B23-7s, which I'm told included overhauls and rebuilds of the FDLs. So this isn't anything new. GE must have done a pretty decent job because the shortlines and regionals that have purchased those ex-ATSF B23s seem to be happy with them. An official from one such railroad remarked that the batch his railroad acquired was "very well maintained."
MEC407
Moderator:
Pan Am Railways — Boston & Maine/Maine Central — Delaware & Hudson
Central Maine & Quebec/Montreal, Maine & Atlantic/Bangor & Aroostook
Providence & Worcester — New England — GE Locomotives
Moderator:
Pan Am Railways — Boston & Maine/Maine Central — Delaware & Hudson
Central Maine & Quebec/Montreal, Maine & Atlantic/Bangor & Aroostook
Providence & Worcester — New England — GE Locomotives
GE has had a very large presense in contract maintenance for years. In todays' world, it may be preferable to return the diesel engine to the manufacturer for overhaul...just to maintain emissions certification.
Many railroads had full process lines for EMD engine material-wonder if the same can be said for GE.
Back in the day, the D&H was but one road who routinely unit-exchanged entire engines...in the interest of minimizing shop residence time for the locomotive.
In the early '80s, GE had planned a major upgrade at both Erie and Grove City. While the Erie upgrade was cancelled, they did do something at Grove City-which resulted in a substantial increase in overall capacity. Absent a large investment in Erie, GE relied on something from their usual corporate bag of tricks-productivity improvements.
BS
Many railroads had full process lines for EMD engine material-wonder if the same can be said for GE.
Back in the day, the D&H was but one road who routinely unit-exchanged entire engines...in the interest of minimizing shop residence time for the locomotive.
In the early '80s, GE had planned a major upgrade at both Erie and Grove City. While the Erie upgrade was cancelled, they did do something at Grove City-which resulted in a substantial increase in overall capacity. Absent a large investment in Erie, GE relied on something from their usual corporate bag of tricks-productivity improvements.
BS
Here is a short video of the main Grove City facility that was shot last week. It is a part of the "Factory Flyover" series of videos that have been made by GE the past few months. You can catch a few glimpses of FDL and Evolution engines in various stages of production.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz9Ms65vT4I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz9Ms65vT4I