Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corporation, commonly known as Wabtec, is an American company formed by the merger of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company (WABCO) and MotivePower in 1999.[6][7] It is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Wabtec manufactures products for locomotives, freight cars and passenger transit vehicles, and builds new locomotives up to 6000 hp. It is a Fortune 500 company.[8][9]
The company purchased GE Transportation on February 25, 2019.
The company's origins go back to 1869 with the founding of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company. That company (known as WA&B and later also as WABCO) became independent in 1990 via a management buy-out, and went public in 1995.[10] (Another company, WABCO Vehicle Control Systems, also created from the Westinghouse Brake Company, is independent of Wabtec. It was spun off by American Standard Companies in 2007, and is today part of German automotive components firm ZF Friedrichshafen.[11])
The other company forming Wabtec, MotivePower, can be traced back to 1972,[12] with the formation of the MK Rail division by Morrison Knudsen and the purchase of a manufacturing facility in Boise. In 1994 Morrison Knudsen created a subsidiary MK Rail Corporation; during the first half of the same decade the MK Rail group expanded with the acquisition of various other locomotive component companies.[13] In 1996, MK Rail group separated from the parent Morrison Knudsen and adopted the name MotivePower Industries Corporation.[14] In the later half of the 1990s additional companies were acquired – again all in the locomotive components business.[15] MotivePower, a wholly owned subsidiary of Wabtec, continues to manufacture locomotives.
The corporate logo is said to represent an axial view of a mechanical brake valve, where different air ports line up between the 'stator' and 'rotor' depending upon the handle position.[16]
On June 10, 2023, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America workers at Wabtec's Erie, Pennsylvania, plant went on strike. Issues included pay, healthcare benefits, paid time off, prohibitions on grievance strikes, and the number of tier-4 emission rules compliant locomotives built at the Erie plant.[17][18][19][20] The strike ended on August 31 with an agreement that raised the pay of workers.[21]
Examples of notable mergers and acquisitions by Wabtec include:
On April 20, 2018, it was reported that General Electric (GE), undergoing a strategic review, was in talks to sell its century-old locomotive business, GE Transportation, to Wabtec, according to people familiar with the matter.[47] On May 21, 2018, GE and Wabtec confirmed the merger of GE Transportation with Wabtec in an $11 billion deal, completed on February 25, 2019, which saw Wabtec shareholders take a 50.8% shareholding in the merged company, with GE shareholders owning 24.3% and GE itself 24.9%.[48][49]
In September 2021, at an event in Pittsburgh, Wabtec unveiled the world’s first battery-electric freight locomotive. It was the result of a joint venture with Carnegie Mellon University, and is part of an initiative by the two organizations to develop zero-emissions technology. Using a traditional locomotive body, the usual diesel engine has been replaced by a large bank of batteries, which drive the traction motors of the locomotive. Regenerative braking is used to help recharge the batteries.
Wabtec claimed that the next version of the locomotive, to be developed within two years, would reduce the consumption of diesel fuel by nearly a third, and that emissions could be entirely eliminated through the development of accompanying hydrogen fuel cells.[50]
The first battery locomotives were for the Roy Hill railway line.[51]
