Siemens will soon start building a $257 million train factory in Yorkshire, United Kingdom.
The new facility, to be built in Goole, will measure 271,000 square meters and include manufacturing and commissioning buildings, warehouses, offices and stabling sidings. The site could also support the development of a test track.
While there is no deadline for the factory to be opened—that will depend on new contracts—Siemens said it should be operational within the next couple of years. The factory would complement Siemen’s eight existing facilities dedicated to servicing the more than 450 passenger trains the company already has in the British rail system.
Siemens will produce 94 new trains at the new factory, fulfilling a $1.9 billion contract to replace the decades-old trains currently on several London Underground lines. Transport for London, which runs the city’s transit system, aims to modernize the Piccadilly, Bakerloo, Central and Waterloo, and City lines, whose trains were built in the 1970s, as part of its Deep Tube Upgrade Programme. The Siemens trains will be 20 feet longer than the current ones and feature full air conditioning and better accessibility.
It is expected that the Goole facility will use cutting-edge technologies on par with other Siemens facilities. Siemens is a respected innovator in manufacturing. The head of Siemens UK, Juergen Maier, headed the British government’s Made Smarter industrial digitalization review. It advocated for the industry to adopt technologies such as 3D printing, AI and robotics. Earlier this year, Siemens invested almost $35 million in a 3D-printing facility in the UK that will print gas turbine blades.
The company has a long and productive relationship with Britain’s rail industry, having worked on the country’s rail system for over 170 years. Siemens is already one of the largest employers in the country’s rail industry.
The plans for the new factory hit a roadblock earlier this year. Bombardier and Hitachi, Siemen’s competitors with their own rail facilities in the country, filed a lawsuit against Transport for London for awarding new train contracts to Siemens. The lawsuit was later struck down, and the courts allowed the Siemens deal to proceed.
Now that the legal hurdles have been cleared, Siemens is eager to break ground.
“We’ve said for some time that future success for Siemens in the rail industry would see us opening a rail manufacturing plant here,” Maier said. “This investment has the potential to have a tremendous impact on the Yorkshire economy, helping to ensure the ongoing development of the UK rail industry.”
Want to read more about advanced manufacturing in the rail industry? Check out GE Transportation Jumps on the 3D Printing Train.