In recent months, GE has seen strong global demand for its advanced technology and has continued to expand and create new jobs in the U.S.—the company has announced 8,000 new jobs in the last 18 months and will hire 15,000 employees in the U.S. in 2011. Part of that growth has been driven by demand for GE Transportation’s rail products, from locomotives to signaling equipment to sophisticated train routing software (check out GE Transportation’s virtual rail expo to interact with some of its offerings). Yesterday, GE announced it would invest $200 million in its new manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, Texas and to upgrade existing operations at its headquarters in Erie, Pennsylvania, which has been building rail products for over a hundred years. In 2011, GE Transportation has added 1,900 American jobs, including 1,000 in Erie, and it operates in 50 GE and customer facilities in the U.S.
While GE Aviation’s fuel-efficient and carrier favorite LEAP engine has been getting a lot of attention recently for bringing significant cost savings and environmental benefits to the skies, GE Transportation’s Evolution Series locomotive engine has quietly been bringing similar emissions reductions, fuel savings and advanced technology to the rails. At this week’s Railway Interchange 2011, a big rail industry conference in Minneapolis, GE Transportation announced that the 4,500th Evolution Series locomotive has just entered revenue service. Those 4,500 locomotives, in use here in the U.S. and all over the world, achieve considerable environmental and cost benefits, summarized in the chart below:
