Share
If you’ve been to the Yonkers waterfront, a very large brick building with a train-car pedestrian bridge jutting out of its side most likely caught your eye and had you wondering, “Hmm…what’s that?” That building, all 150,000 square feet of it, has been home to Kawasaki Rail Car, Inc., for the past 25 years. Even if you’ve never seen the building, you know Kawasaki if you’ve ever ridden Metro-North, the NYC Subway, or the LIRR. That’s because a majority of the more than 4,000 rail cars the company has produced are used in the New York metro area.
Depending on how many outstanding contracts the company has, some 2,000 employees work at the Yonkers location. Recent and current Kawasaki contracts include NYC flat cars; NYC Subway cars (the R188 for the 7 line); Metro-North cars (the M8, which runs on the New Haven Line); LIRR cars (the M9); and overhauling train cars that were damaged in Superstorm Sandy for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PATH cars). While most of the cars are made in the company’s Lincoln, Nebraska, facility, final assembly (fabrication of components, painting, installation, etc.), along with function testing (including break tests on the company’s quarter-mile test track outside), takes place in Yonkers.
We were eager to see the process up close, so Kawasaki pulled back the curtain and let us inside for a peek of all that goes on at its manufacturing and production facility.
-
- Outside view of Kawasaki’s production plant, located in the i.Park Hudson office campus in the Yonkers Waterfront District. After leasing for 25 years, the company purchased the building last year in a multi-million-dollar deal that will keep the company in Yonkers for the foreseeable future.
-
- This area, known internally as the “401 station,” is where all under-floor parts are installed—the compression, breaking, and electrical systems, among other components. To the left are the brand new R188 cars (shipped in from Lincoln) and in the middle are older R188 cars that are being rehabbed.
-
- Some of Kawasaki’s work includes the overhauling of train cars to put them back into service. Here, a Kawasaki employee uses a grinder to cut a bracket from the bottom of a car for one of the company’s rehabilitation projects. Due to safety requirements, workers performing these job tasks must wear face protection, including a respirator, so they don’t breathe any steel dust while they work.
-
- Every morning, to save them time, workers get plans and all materials they’ll need to work with throughout the day.
-
- Perhaps the cleanest you’ll ever see a NYC Subway car. While the car shells are manufactured in Lincoln, Nebraska, workers at the Yonkers site will install all interior components to the car—in addition to all the under-floor equipment.
-
- This is a truck for the R188 car. On the assembly line, workers add all necessary parts to the truck system, such as the primary suspension coil springs, secondary suspension airbag (the object that resembles a bell up top), and the current collector (the red object in the middle), which attaches to the electrified third rail. After this stage, trucks will undergo a series of tests and inspection points to ensure proper performance and safety requirements.
-
- In this close-up picture of the truck, you can see that the bolts are marked with torque value (the white lines). During maintenance, if those white marks are out of line, they know the bolt is coming loose.
-
- As seen in this shot (which looks like a train about to run the camera over), the cars are jacked up so all work can be done to the undercarriage before being taken to the trucking area, where the trucks are attached to the car.
-
- This is a view of the trucking station, where the cars are jacked up and placed on trucks for attachment. After they’re attached, the train car is weighed on the yellow scales. By contract, cars have to be a certain weight. In the distance, you can see the station for function tests, where resident inspectors test everything from lights to HVAC to communications systems.
-
- For a hint of what takes place inside the building, Kawasaki has a pedestrian bridge over its parking lot that resembles—what else?—a train car.
-
- Not everything is as large-scale as train cars. Here an employee bends a piece of sheet metal into a heating cover.