Wabtec has begun operations at the Neighborhood 91 additive manufacturing site at Pittsburgh International Airport’s Innovation Campus. Wabtec’s SLM 800 printer will produce large scale lightweight parts for rail industry customers, including aluminium components such as metro brake parts and heat sinks for freight locomotives, with additive manufacturing expected to reduce lead times by up to 80%. Wabtec plans to use additive technologies to produce over 25 000 parts by 2025.
Šumperk-based rolling stock maintenance and repair company Pars Nova formally changed its name to Škoda Pars on May 17. Škoda Transportation bought the former Pars DMN works in March 2008 and is currently investing Kc460m to increase production capacity by up to 35% and to boost the use of innovative technologies.
Rossi Group’s Generale Costruzioni Ferroviarie has acquired a 60% stake in family owned railway construction and maintenance company Cenedese which is based near Treviso in Italy. There is provision for GCF to acquire the remaining 40% stake in 10% tranches by 2025.
Night train start-up European Sleeper’s first share sale on May 27 sold out within 15 min, attracting more than 350 investors from Europe and beyond. This has raised the €500 000 in seed capital needed to launch its first service between Praha, the Netherlands and Belgium in partnership with RegioJet.
Wegh Group has acquired Italian concrete sleeper and ballastless track slab manufacturer IPA Ferroviaria in a €22m investment; it had previously leased the business for nine years in what it called a ‘complex process’.
Alstom has appointed Accenture and Dassault Systèmes to develop a cloud platform for product lifecycle management. Based on Dassault’s 3DExperience platform, this is intended to optimise collaboration among Alstom’s design offices and better integrate and standardise engineering, manufacturing and maintenance processes. Deployment is to begin this year for worldwide adoption in 2022.
A Stucki Co has appointed Philip F Pietrandea as Division President of Maintenance of Way at its Birmingham Rail & Locomotive business unit with effect from July 1. He will work closely on a transition with Jo Ann Cary, who recently announced her retirement as president of BR&L. Pietrandrea joins after five years with Wabtec.
Systra’s New York office has moved to 55 Broad Street.
Israel Railways is to exercise an option to increase its stake in machine vision technology company Rail Vision.
Commenting on the introduction of the Invest in America Act, on June 8 the US Railway Supply Institute said ‘this bill would strengthen the Buy America programme to ensure that domestic content requirements are rigorously enforced, close loopholes that allow foreign state-owned enterprises to exploit American tax dollars and create new safeguards in the freight railcar manufacturing industry that will preserve a competitive playing field for years to come. The Invest in America Act would also significantly increase funding for commuter rail and passenger rail systems that would allow for continued growth to meet our nation’s mobility needs.’
