GE Transportation has seen strong global demand for its heavy mining equipment this year—so far growing at a double-digit pace. It has reported $2.1 billion in revenues for the first half of 2011, up 45%, and profits at $335 million, up 135%. The GE division has already announced plans to hire for 2,000 jobs in the U.S. in 2011, including 1,100 positions already filled at the Erie plant, which is currently operating at peak capacity for rail and transportation-related products.

GE will spend $95 million on the new factory in Fort Worth and create some 130 manufacturing jobs there by the expected launch in mid-2012. The 236,000 square-foot plant will manufacture and assemble electric motorized wheels powering house-sized mining trucks that top 1.4 million pounds fully loaded. These wheels can be over 13 feet tall and weigh over 100,000 pounds alone. GE invented electric wheel drive systems in 1963 and through constant innovation has remained an industry leader.

In Erie, GE will invest a total $136 million and hire 360 workers. Some $38 million will be used to increase capacity and modernize equipment used to manufacture drive systems for mining trucks, locomotives and other transportation products.

The company will also spend $58 million to build test labs for large-scale diesel engines, and invest in research and testing technology to reduce emissions and improve fuel efficiency of GE locomotives and other heavy-duty engines.
Finally, GE, which has had production facilities in Erie for more than a century, will use $40 million on plant upgrades, site beautification, and a new customer showcase center.

This is the second large investment announced in Fort Worth and Erie this year. In May 2011, GE announced plans to open a $96 million locomotive manufacturing factory. That investment is set to create 500 jobs and further 275 openings beyond 2012. Also in May, GE said that it would add 250 jobs to meet growing demand for GE goods.

* For more news from Erie, please visit Erie Times-News.

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:

GE plans to invest up to $96 million to build the state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Texas. The new 900,000-square-foot facility will house manufacturing and assembly of GE’s rail and transportation-related products, including fuel-efficient locomotives like the Evolution® Series, which reduces emissions by up to 40 percent and cuts fuel use by 5 percent – the equivalent of 640,000 gallons over its lifetime.

Production on the new plant is scheduled to start by 2012.

Texas Governor Rick Perry has already expressed enthusiasm, saying “This investment will create a major locomotive manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, along with hundreds of jobs for Texans and millions in capital investment in the area.”

In Erie, Pennsylvania — GE Transportation’s home for the past 100 years — expansion is also underway. GE’s Erie plant, which employs over 4,500 people, will be hiring an additional 250 production workers. It’s yet another notch in Erie’s job-growth belt: the facility has recalled around 800 production workers since late 2010, and announced 450 new jobs since April (including the 250 announced today). The job growth is a natural outcrop of GE Transportation’s growing business — it received $938 million of orders in the first quarter, and reported $903 million in first-quarter revenues, up 18% year-over-year. Segment profits for the same period were $157 million, up 37% year-over-year.

GE Transportation’s Evolution Series locomotive.

The five agreements are expected to deliver more than $2 billion in revenue for GE, which is the nation’s second-largest manufacturing exporter, and generate more than $1 billion in exports from the U.S. Importantly, they’ll be creating or supporting jobs in both countries — including more than 4,500 U.S. jobs.

The deals include:

• A joint venture between GE Energy and Shenhua Group Corporation signed on Tuesday to develop coal gasification technologies in China, key to commercial-scale deployment of cleaner coal solutions. This collaboration is expected to generate more than $150 million in revenues over five years and $100 million of U.S. exports in services, R&D and licensing. It will also support job creation in the United States and China, including hundreds of jobs in Houston, Greenville, SC; and Schenectady, NY.

• A collaborative agreement between GE Energy and China Huadian Corporation to develop distributed energy combined heat and power projects, which are expected to become the most efficient natural gas solutions for China. GE forecasts at least 50 gas-turbine generator sets being sold and installed in China in the next five years, resulting in $500 million of revenue for the partnership and $350 million in U.S. gas turbine exports from Cincinnati, Houston, Colorado and Oregon. This will support more than 2,100 jobs throughout GE’s domestic U.S. supply chain.

• A joint venture between GE Aviation and Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) to develop and market the new generation of avionics systems with an immediate priority on supporting development of China’s first home-grown big passenger jet. The joint venture will result in $300 million in exports from Michigan, Florida and Ohio and support at least 300 high-tech jobs in each the United States and China.

• A Letter of Intent signed by GE Transportation with the Ministry of Railways (MOR) to provide $350 million worth of U.S.-built locomotives, locomotive sub-assembly kits, service support and signaling systems for China’s railway upgrade. The export order could support 2,000 U.S. jobs

• A Letter of Intent signed by GE Transportation with the MOR to reaffirm both parties’ intent to collaborate on High-Speed Rail (HSR) and electric rail opportunities in North America. The partnership represents a joint investment of approximately $50 million with the potential to support 250 U.S. jobs by 2012 for the first phase of the agreement.

These agreements build on a larger-scale commitment GE has already made last November when GE announced plans to invest more than $2 billion in China through 2012 to expand the company’s R&D and innovation capabilities and create new local partnerships.

Additionally, GE has been selected as one of 10 founding U.S. companies to participate in a new U.S.-China public-private partnership on healthcare, which was also launched during President Hu’s visit and aims to bolster bilateral cooperation advancing technology in and increasing accessibility to healthcare services across China.

Clean tech: The development of coal gasification technologies, such as those in the plant above, will support job creation in the U.S. and China, including hundreds of jobs in Houston, Greenville, SC; and Schenectady, NY.

The latest installment of The GE Show, an online series that examines large-scale issues and explains what’s being done to solve them, today launched with a closer look at the dramatic rebirth underway in the rail industry. From the ecomagination hybrid locomotive — which captures and converts the energy from braking to help power the train — to air traffic control-style software for railroads, new technologies are now converging.

To get an idea of just how much energy can be saved when pitting GE’s hybrid locomotive against a diesel-electric one, try out the “Trip Calculator” below. As you can see in the L.A. to Chicago run, the hybrid saves 349 gallons of fuel. (Diesel-electric locomotives are also making giant leaps in technology. For example, another batch of ecomagination PowerHaul locomotives — GE’s most technologically advanced, fuel-efficient diesel-electric freight locomotive to date — just shipped to the U.K. yesterday.)

Track star: Click the image to use the calculator on The GE Show.

In designing the newest locomotive, GE’s engineers started thinking about how to conserve energy by converting the train’s momentum into electricity. For example, the energy dissipated in braking a 207-ton locomotive during the course of one year is enough to power over 8,900 average U.S. households for a year.

While the science can be complex, the super slow-motion video below illustrates the power that is harnessed from recaptured energy as part of GE Transportation’s Regenerative Braking platform.

What a waste: Click the image to play the video on GE.com.

The revolution in rails can also be seen in the software guiding individual trains and entire fleets. For example, GE’s ecomagination Trip Optimizer is like cruise control with a PhD. It uses sophisticated software and considers hills, curves and data about the train itself to map out the most efficient route possible, minimizing both braking and acceleration.

On a fleet wide scale, GE Transportation’s RailEdge Movement Planner acts like air traffic control for railroads. It analyzes train schedules, traffic control systems and train movements relative to each other and then creates an optimized traffic plan for the trains, even down to the best speed at which to travel to keep the flow going throughout the railroad.

Try out the game below to get an idea of just how hard it can be to juggle a busy rail yard by switching trains to new tracks in real time.

It takes a train (game) to cry: Click the image to play the game on GE.com.

The video below provides a closer look at GE’s RailEdge software.

* Read more rail stories on GE Reports
* See the flight episode of The GE Show
* Try out the Electric Vehicles installment of The GE Show

So how do we get trains to run that fast? As Gagan Sood, Executive Project Leader-High Speed at GE Transportation, puts it, “high speed rail is a systems approach, where all different aspects — tracks, traction power, signaling, communication, and motors — need to be designed to work seamlessly together as one system.”

Here are the five biggest necessities for truly high-speed rail:

1. Dedicated Tracks: The thousands of miles of freight tracks already laid across the U.S. generally can’t handle speeds above 110 mph. One must construct dedicated lines using the “slab track” technology for over 300 mph operation. These new ballast-less tracks require less maintenance, and have the benefits of reduced dust, noise, pollution, and a smoother ride.
   
   
2. Secure Corridors: For Safety reasons, the Federal Railroad Administration prohibits grade crossings on tracks where trains run at more than 125 mph. So, a multitude of bridges and underpasses will need to be constructed along each new HSR route.
   
   
3. EMU Rolling Stock: Conventional trains are generally powered by a single locomotive that pulls all the cars along behind it — but HSR design is based on Electric Multiple Unit (EMU) technology. Typical EMU “trainsets” could have up to six powered coaches interspersed over the length of the train, which together generate up to 9600 KW of force. At such high speeds, the contact with overhead Cantenary (the overhead power line) is maintained using pneumatic pantographs with small wings which create lift at high speeds and help ensure contact between the train and the catenary.
   
   
4. Automatic Train Controls: Typically, conventional freight and passenger systems use what is known as “wayside signaling” — lights alongside the track that help the conductor determine the appropriate rate of speed. At speeds above 150 mph, however, there isn’t enough time to react to wayside signals. HSR trains require an Automatic Train Control system, which conveys route and track information directly to the conductor’s control console.
   
   
5. Funding: The federal government has already appropriated $10.5 billion to fund HSR projects, but that’s just seed money for a project of this magnitude. “For dedicated HSR corridors,” Mr. Sood says, “a high-speed system that runs at more than 186 mph will need an investment 10 times what is required for a 110 mph system.” That comes to roughly $35 million per mile of dedicated track.

Both Florida and California are pursuing high-speed rail projects, and a new joint venture between GE and China’s CSR is in the running to make the trains for it. The video below from the California High Speed Rail Authority explains the state’s vision for their massive rail line — and just what it will take to get it built.

The new company, which will also work on medium-speed passenger trains as well as transit rail vehicles for urban areas in the U.S., would be the first U.S. manufacturer ready to supply high-speed rail technology for two proposed corridors in Florida and California.

The joint venture between GE and CSR has the potential to sustain or create 250 U.S. jobs by 2012 for the first phase of the agreement. High-speed rail development in America is projected to sustain approximately 3,500 high-tech manufacturing U.S. jobs in the long term.

GE is the world leader in diesel-electric locomotive technology, and also brings U.S manufacturing know-how, supply chain expertise, and in-depth knowledge of the U.S. rail market to the new company. With China planning to expand its railway network to span 120,000 kilometers — including 16,000 kilometers of dedicated high-speed rail track — CSR brings expertise in rail technology for speeds of 220 miles per hour and higher.

GE is already working with CSR to provide China with fuel-efficient and low-emissions diesel-electric, heavy-haul locomotive – with 300 Evolution locomotives already placed into operation. A separate agreement with the Chinese Ministry of Railways will also look at ways to deploy fuel saving rail software solutions like GE’s Trip Optimizer and advanced signaling technology into the Chinese market.

Fast times: One of China’s trains hit a record 302 mph over the weekend, which was a record for an unmodified conventional commercial train.

* Read the announcement
* Read “The 5 Things You Need to Make a Train Go 300 MPH

Less fill-ups: Part of GE’s $4 billion-a-year software and solutions services business, Trip Optimizer creates train-specific speeds that minimize braking by learning a train’s characteristics. The system calculates the most efficient way of running based on factors like train length, weight, track conditions, and weather.

It’s why the industry is searching for alternative solutions — such as better technology that can substantially increase both the speed and fuel efficiency of freight trains. When deployed on a large scale, these technologies can have larger implications for the freight industry, not to mention the economy overall — considering that more than 40 million container loads of inbound cargo came in from Asia to North America last year, all needing to be transported to stores and warehouses.

One technology currently in the field is GE Transportation’s Trip Optimizer software that serves as a sort of cruise control for freight trains. Part of GE’s ecomagination line of more energy efficient technologies, the program calculates the optimal speed for fuel consumption based on the specific train type and route, and then automatically controls the throttle to maintain that speed during the entire trip, thereby saving millions of gallons of fuel. Today it marked a new milestone in the field, having saved 3.3 million gallons of fuel on the first five million miles of track traveled.

The testers include four North American Class 1 railroads. They’ve all outfitted their trains with Trip Optimizer, and as a result saw their fuel use drop approximately 7 percent — a reduction of more than 37,000 tons of CO2, the equivalent of taking over 7,000 passenger cars off of the road or planting more than 10,000 acres of forest — which is just a small window into the cumulative fuel savings if the entire U.S. fleet of freight trains was using it.

Trip Optimizer isn’t GE’s first foray into advancing freight technology: There’s also LOCOTROL, which increases hauling capacity and reduces operating costs, and RailEdge, which enables railroads to create better train schedules, moving more freight faster on their existing networks.

* Read today’s announcement
* Read more Transportation stories on GE Reports
* Read More About Canada’s Use of Trip Advisor
* Read More About RailEdge

Speed racer: Here’s an artist rendering of what the next generation, higher speed passenger locomotive by GE could look like.

The teams say that the new design, with its advanced traction technology and the ability to remotely monitor key diagnostics, is poised to deliver the most reliable and efficient passenger locomotive to date. Importantly, it helps position them “to lead the way in developing locomotives for the higher-speed rail corridors of the future,” said Wabtec’s President and CEO Albert J. Neupaver.

GE’s technology was developed for the Evolution Series Locomotive, which represents a $400 million, eight-year investment. Today more than 3,700 GE Evolution Series locomotives are in revenue service around the world.

Pennsylvania-based Wabtec’s decision to go with the GE components follows China’s decision in November to work with GE to accelerate the development of high-speed rail projects in the U.S.— and the announcement in April that the new partnership is in the running to power California’s planned high-speed passenger rail project.

* Read today’s announcement
* Read more rail stories on GE Reports
* See why our Evolution series is part of our ecomagination line
* Learn about our Evolution Hybrid Locomotive

“This technology increases the capacity of railways worldwide without laying a single new track,” Lorenzo Simonelli, GE Transportation President and CEO, explains. “RailEdge optimizes the railroad resources that are already in place — something that only technology can truly help us achieve.” For example, a railroad running 20 trains a day between New York and Washington, DC could increase that to 23 trains a day with RailEdge simply by better utilizing the existing track more productively.

Following the success of the initial rollout, Norfolk Southern now has plans to use it along its entire 22 state network. The small gains in routing and speed for Norfolk Southern trains add up to “sizeable efficiency gains on a 2,500-train per day, 21,000-route mile system like ours,” Wick Moorman, CEO of Norfolk Southern, said. “With railroads, it’s about scale… When we make the best use of existing transportation infrastructure, that’s a competitive advantage for our customers and the country.”

RailEdge also improves railroad crew management availability. It’s the latest example of how GE’s $4 billion-a-year software and solutions services businesses are helping customers improve productivity.

Track star: Without movement planner, a freight train leaving Louisville, KY would arrive in Macon, GA in about 27 hours. With Movement Planner, that same train would arrive in 22.5 hours. Saving more than 4 hours of travel.

Watch CNBC’s interview this morning with Lorenzo Simonelli and Wick Moorman:

* Read today’s announcement
* Read more transportation stories on GE Reports
* Read “GE’s fuel ‘autopilot’ software set for 200 locomotives” on GE Reports
* See why our Evolution series is part of our ecomagination line
* Learn about our Evolution Hybrid Locomotive