On 25 August, CRRC Corp. vice-president Yu Weiping spoke repeatedly about using the plant to bring manufacturing back to Springfield.
CRRC plans to start hiring production workers for its new subway-car plant here on Page Boulevard in October and start sending them to China for advanced training by February.
That's the next step, CRRC officials said, following "topping out" ceremony at the $95 million plant in East Springfield on August 25.
"This first group of workers will come back and help train others," said Bo Jia, vice president of CRRC MA, through a translator. "We are very excited."
Gov. Charlie Baker and officials from CRRC and from the MBTA celebrated the "topping out" ceremony at the 204,000-square-foot factory Thursday. Union steelworkers hoisted the ceremonial last piece of steel into place with the construction process currently about 60 days ahead of schedule.
Work on the plant, which will employ 150 workers, is expected to be completed by the fall of 2017. The first rail cars are scheduled to be delivered in 2018.
Springfield Mayor Domenic J. Sarno, said "First of all, it’s a great project for Western Mass, but it’s also a great project for Massachusetts period," Baker said, adding that the MBTA cars the plant will build are sorely needed.
The subway cars produced at the Springfield plant will replace cars that date back to the 1970s.
"No more sleepless nights with 40-year-old subway cars rattling under the streets of Boston," said CRRC Changchun vice-president Chuanhe Zhou through a translator. "Boston is a center for great transportation and should be able to point with pride to its subway cars."
The Red and Orange lines are the busiest in the network, together carrying 40 percent of the MBTA ridership, said MBTA General Manager Brian Shortsleeve.
In Oct. 2014, CRRC received a $566 million contract to manufacture 284 subway cars for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, Greater Boston's mass transit system. Of those cars, 152 will be for the Orange Line and 132 will be for the for the Red Line. First delivery of the Orange cars is expected in March 2018 and production is expected to last five years.
The plant will have a 2,240-foot dynamic test track.
The state, under then-Gov. Deval Patrick, said no to federal funding for the cars so that it was able to specify that they be assembled here in the state. The idea was to use the MBTA work to stimulate a rail car industry here.
On 25 August, Baker credited the Patrick administration and his former chief of staff, Rick Sullivan, for the project. Sullivan, a former mayor of Westfield, is now president and CEO of the Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council.
Springfield was once a center for rail car manufacturing because of the Wason Manufacturing Co., which was one of the largest makers of railroad cars and locomotives in the country and operated here from 1845 to the Great Depression. The Shelburne Falls Trolley Museum has a working Wason trolley car built in Springfield in 1896 and offers rides.
The CRRC plant will be on the site of the old Westinghouse plant. Westinghouse built there in 1915 and had 4,500 employees by 1930. Westinghouse used the site for research, too, establishing radio station WBZ there in 1921 as America's first licensed commercial radio station.
And it’s not just the MBTA contract, which is expected to last for just five years of production.
Jia said CRRC is working to get business building transit and high-speed rail for Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York City and elsewhere.
In March, CRRC signed a deal with Chicago transit officials to build 846 metro cars there. That Chicago will employ 170.
"The market in North America is too big to serve with just one plant," Jia said. "This will be our hub. It depends on the capacity here, but the skilled manufacturing will be here."
Internationally, CRRC has recently sold cars to railroads in: China-Laos, China-Thailand, Hungary-Serbia, Russia, Jakarta-Bandung in Indonesia and the Pacific-Atlantic Railway in South America.
China-owned Plaza Construction is the general contractor for the plant. But CRRC said Thursday subcontractors and union construction workers were all hired locally.
Consigli Construction Co. Inc. in Milford is the contractor renovating the lone standing Westinghouse building into new offices for CRRC. All its employees on the job are from Massachusetts.
Anthony Consigli, CEO of Consigli Construction Co., Inc. in Milford said:
"As a Massachusetts company, we understand the importance of this project as a historic manufacturing plant will once again be a crucial component of our state's economy. From local jobs to new public transportation, we're proud to be a part of a project that will have a major impact on our community for years to come."
