Western Rail Coalition > The Trains > Manufacturers
Currently three European manufacturers, Alstom, Siemens and Stadler, offer FRA certified and Buy America compliant trains for the North American market.
Alstom
Alstom offers the widest selection of FRA compliant passenger rail equipment including high-speed trainsets, locomotives, high-floor and low-floor train cars including multi-level options. The company, who recently merged with fellow manufacturer Bombardier, offers an ‘Adessia Stream’ multiple unit train and ‘Adessia’ locomotive-hauled cars that are both high-floor and would be assembled at one of its facilities in upstate New York or Pennsylvania.\
The Adessia range currently has one order, for 60 locomotive-hauled cars from the Connecticut Department of Transportation.
Siemens
Siemens Mobility is currently concentrating on fulfilling several large orders (including the ‘Airo’ trains for Amtrak) of its best-selling modern, low-emission diesel ‘Charger’ locomotives and single-level, high-floor ‘Ventura’ coaches. Despite building large amounts of them in Europe, the company does not currently offer any multiple unit or low-floor fleet options in North America.
Stadler Rail
Stadler Rail is currently expanding its presence in the North American market and has received orders for its ‘FLIRT’ DMU from Trinity Metro and DART in the Dallas – Fort Worth area plus OC Transpo in Ottowa, Canada. The FLIRT is also a best selling train design in Europe with over 2,500 units sold. Units are assembled at Stadler’s facility in Salt Lake City. While all the FLIRT units produced for the North American market so far have been low-floor versions, Stadler does offer a high-floor version for the United Kingdom market.
Stadler also offers it’s KISS bi-level multiple unit design as both an EMU and a BEMU. It is currently in the prices of completing an order for both variants for Caltrain in the Bay Area.
Stadler does build locomotives and hauled passenger cars for the U.S. market, however these have generally been for small, bespoke uses such as the ‘Rocky Mountaineer’ luxury train.
What happened to the legacy U.S. manufacturers?
The U.S. used to have a proud record of producing heavy rail multiple unit trains with manufacturers such as Budd and the St. Louis Car Company churning out railcars for rail and subway operations up until the 1980s. Japanese firms such as Kawasaki and Nippon Sharyo then stepped into the breach, often producing cars based on original American designs.
Since then Hyundai Rotem, supplier of the ‘Silverliner V’ trains used on RTD’s commuter rail network, has closed its assembly factory in Philadelphia and exited the North American heavy rail market. Nippon Sharyo, supplier of DMUs for the SMART and Toronto Union Pearson Express, has also done likewise.
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