Stadler US Inc. has officially opened its newly constructed Salt Lake City train production facility in the state of Utah.
As part of the celebration, Stadler re-enacted the historic meeting of the trains at Promontory point with the company’s own electric and diesel trains for CalTrain and TEXRail.
“It is a great pleasure to present a car body of the first double-deck train being manufactured for the USA as well as the last Flirt for TEXRail. To a high degree, these trains were built right here in Salt Lake City”, Stdaler President of the Board of Directors, Peter Spuhler, said.
The new production facility near the airport was completed this year, after 18 months of construction.
All operations were transferred from the leased Warm Springs site to the new site last month. The current building, 230,000 square feet in size, is located on a 62 acre site in the North West quadrant and consists of multiple halls, measuring 45,000 square feet each.
Stadler contributed to the development of the area and is planning on employing a total of 350 local Utah workers to complete the project for California’s Caltrain.
The company worked with local rail provider Salt Lake Garfield and Western (SLGW) to install an industry rail section connecting the new facility directly to the U.S. national rail network via their services. This connection allows materials from around the world, shipped to receiving ports such as Long Beach or Houston, to be transported directly to the facility via railways and rolled into the receiving hall for unloading and loading.
With Stacy & Witbeck, a local contractor, Stadler constructed a 3-km train test track with overhead catenary systems, which will be used to commission and test trains as they come off the production line and are moved into dynamic testing. Once testing is complete and the train is accepted, it is shipped to any customer in the USA via the freight line and SLGW.
The construction of the new facility comes after Caltrain awarded Stadler, in 2016, a USD 551 million contract for the supply of 16 six-car Kiss double-decker EMUs, with an option for additional 96 cars. The contract is part of Caltrain’s San Francisco – San Jose electrification project. In December 2018, Caltrain approved the acquisition of 37 additional double-deck EMUs, under the 2016 contract which stipulates that the US operator can purchase the additional vehicles at the original price of USD 174.6 million.
The purchase of electric railcars is one of Caltrain’s most important projects and would replace 75% of the diesel vehicle fleet operating along the San Francisco – San Jose corridor.
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