Passenger Trains > Watch this space--Kinki Sharyo plant, Palmdale CA

The LA County Metro has announced a contract for new Light Rail Vehicles has been signed with Kinki Nippon. The company will build a new plant in Palmdale, in the Antelope Valley northeast of downtown Los Angeles. The site is at Ave. M and Sierra Highway, about halfway between the Lancaster and Palmdale Metrolink stations, so passengers will be able to see construction progress as they go by. It may be a race to see if the plant can get production going before the Gold Line Foothill Extension to Azusa and the Expo Line extension to Santa Monica (on the former Pacific Electric route) are ready to open. Then we have the Crenshaw line opening a few years later, and the original Blue Line cars will be 25 years old in 2015. And don't feel too bad for Siemens--they're busy with "juice jacks" for the Northeast Corridor and I think they have the San Francisco Muni LRV job coming up.

At least they will be assembled in California where we need the jobs. But even better, the taxpayers of Los Angeles County won't have to pay for hotel rooms, airline tickets and per diem for the politic-ans that would have gone to the plant in Sacramento to get there pictures taken and make stupid speeches when the first "new" light rail vehicle rolls off the assembly line. They can just drive to Palmdale for the day instead.

BNSF6400 Wrote:
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^They can just drive to Palmdale for the day instead.

Or they can take Metrolink, an LACMTA funded service...

That rush hour traffic on Ave. M and P will be that much worse then once they open the facility!

The work will be done in an existing plant on the Palmdale airport.

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

OK--maybe the article I read didn't have the exact location. I looked at a satellite image of Ave. M and Sierra, and it showed a big patch of vacant land on the southeast corner. Ave. M is the boundary between Palmdale and Lancaster, and going further east on M one comes to the airport. Considering that there may be some aerospace facilities that are now vacant, it would make sense to re-purpose one of them.

DNRY122 Wrote:
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> OK--maybe the article I read didn't have the exact
> location. I looked at a satellite image of Ave. M
> and Sierra, and it showed a big patch of vacant
> land on the southeast corner. Ave. M is the
> boundary between Palmdale and Lancaster, and going
> further east on M one comes to the airport.
> Considering that there may be some aerospace
> facilities that are now vacant, it would make
> sense to re-purpose one of them.

I've been told they're using the old Rockwell plant on the North side of the airport.
It's where they built the Space Shuttle Endeavour and where the shuttles got their mid-life overhauls.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/14 19:27 by PHall.

If you zoom in close on the Satellite version of Google Maps, there is a neat Double Crossover before going into one of the buildings that exits and runs along Avenue M

That would be cool if LA gets light rail cars built in the former Space Shuttle plant. Last year I rode the Expo Line to the Science Center to see Endeavour (my brother's team designed the hydraulics for the landing gear, so I had a family connection). A railroad connection to Rockwell: that company bought out Ohmer Register, a company that built fare registers used by many electric railway systems, including Pacific Electric. When the trolley car business dried up, Ohmer concentrated on taxicab fare meters, and I've been in taxis with the Rockwell logo on the fare meter. I think they also got into heavy castings, making truck frames for locomotives.

BNSF6400 Wrote:
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(SNIP)...the taxpayers of Los Angeles County won't have to pay
for hotel rooms, airline tickets and per diem for
the politic-ans that would have gone to the plant
in Sacramento to get there pictures taken ... (SNIP)

Close proximity to Los Angeles won't keep some politicians
from taking full advantage of any perks they are "entitled".

Jim Montague
IRVINE, CA
Train and Nature photo Art