Ignoring the obvious contradiction in the funding announcement, why are we throwing even more tax dollars at a chronic money loser? There was a time when Canada built plenty of locomotives, but apparently we lost all that knowledge and now need to relearn it. Who knew?
“Locomotive assembly is returning to Canada,” Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon said Wednesday at a news conference in Montreal, where the plant will be built.
Ottawa says the trains will be built by Switzerland-based Stadler. The first nine are to be built in Spain, while the remaining 36 will be built in Canada after Canadian workers learn how to assemble them from their Spanish counterparts.
Let’s just bring in the Spanish workers to assemble them here!!
You mean their new Muslim workforce? Yeah, Carney would be good with that.
Mexicans are cheaper, si?
How do you spell ‘branch plant economy ‘? Now I am dating myself….
are the Liberals aka the ‘anything-for-power’ party courting the union vote?
And Brookfield probably supplies the batteries, generators, and electric motors. Batteries for sure.
Bombardier is gonna be PISSED!
I think there may be another nation closer to Canada that makes locomotives. We could even drive them to Canada, unlike from Spain.
Yes, but the right people wouldn’t get their graft. And what’s more important here?
Why is it that only the government is funding projects? Pipelines, airports, trains, battery plants…always the government. We truly are a socialists/communist paradise. The private sector barely seems to exist.
This whole thing is shaping up to be the gold standard of waste and nepotism. Maybe they’ll get the gauge right..bets?
Wow. That almost sounds like what DEI did to Boeing
Heh,solar steam locomotives.
Locomotion not being the goal here.
“Assembly” eh?
The only assembly that currently profits in this sad effin country is the assembly of first nations.
Boom!
And when they assemble … the knowledge keepers play telephone and invent ever new indigenous histories. Stories … when told strategically … can mean a BIG payday for the Chiefs.
Kenji, you spelled “dissemble” wrongly.
Give somebody enough money (I’d say about a quarter of what the Spaniards and the Swiss are getting.) and they could set up the operation, train Canuck farm boys & get all 45 engines built on home ground.
Hey, we, the U. S. and Canada. did it in the 1800s, hiring crews with hay seeds still in their hair, trained then on site and built the biggest and best steam locomotives without sending one man to Spain! Absolutely no reason we couldn’t do the same with diesel-electrics today.
Exactly right. The best functioning plant I ever worked in was started from the ground up in North Carolina and staffed with completely inexperienced rural people with a great work ethic and no bad habits from prior positions in the same industry. In fact, we eventually eradicated a lot of bad practices that management brought with them from New Jersey, where labor unions had put themselves out of work.
https://lfpress.com/2015/07/14/electro-motive-era-finally-ends
Part of the original General Motors complex in London, the locomotive-building operation was sold after GM got out of that business to focus on vehicles.
GM’s former defence operation next door was bought by U.S. defence giant General Dynamics after GM Defense won a $6-billion contract to supply light armoured vehicles to the U.S. military.
The site was thrust under a harsh spotlight in 2012, when Caterpillar, which builds railway equipment, locked out the workers after a take-it-or-leave-it contract offer that would have slashed the wages for many jobs.
The case drew national attention, underlining the precarious nature of work for even highly skilled tradespeople under a ruthless cost-cutter. Caterpillar eventually moved the work to the U.S.
Trac Rail is also in London. I did some consulting for them a few years ago. Although I think they sell systems to modernize existing locos
Does the (money) train fall mainly on the plain (of Spain)?
LOL
My Fair Trainee.
Soon to be a series on Shaw Cable.
This puts the Loco in Motives.
There are plenty of bored men in Canada who would welcome the chance to build shit.
I hate Liberals.
Just another “money/jobs to K-bec” announcement using Albertan and Saskatchewan taxes.
And once those final 36 locomotives are built, then what?
I foresee a bunch of guys who were trained in Spain at great expense getting a pink slip as #36 rolls out of the mill…
…so I hope they know to soak them for every penny they can get, and gold-brick as hard as they can.
Has anyone asked the rail companies if they want said locomotives? The freight business is historically ruthless, ask any prairie grain farmer about the CPR.
So, back to 19th century technology for the Fiberals, playing with trains.
Should we be surprised, more funding for another government service that’s barely surviving.
Chinada, one of the most backward nations on earth.
At least with those extraordinary costs, should put to rest any resuscitation of other dormant rail lines, that have been cited as too expensive to resurrect from the dead.
Cough, cough, E&N, cough, cough. A dead beast that needs to stay dead.
Via loses $100 per passenger. Just kill it. Take it out behind the barn and shoot it. Take part of the $400 million annual loss and build roads to the few communities on rail lines that have no roads.
So, without insane incentives, we would have no locomotives…