http://www.terradaily.com/news/china-05zzzzzzzzzzu.html
Washington (AFP) Nov 01, 2005
US conglomerate General Electric Co. said Tuesday it had won a big contract to supply 300 train locomotives to China to help in the booming country’s bid to modernise its vast rail network.
GE said it had signed the contract worth more than 450 million dollars with the Chinese Railways Ministry to supply the 6,000-horsepower locomotives in cooperation with the Qishuyan Locomotive and Rolling Stock Works.
“We are excited and pleased to advance our presence in the rail industry in China,” said John Dineen, chief executive of GE Infrastructure’s rail business, in a statement.
The deal “will open new lines of revenue, give us a larger installed base outside of North America and enable GE to better compete to replace China’s current fleet of 6,500 mainline locomotives over the next 15 years”, he said.
Delivery of the locomotives is planned to start in 2007 and end in 2009.
The Railways Ministry Tuesday outlined plans to list parts of China’s vast but creaking rail network on global stock markets to raise some of the 250 billion dollars it needs over the next 15 years for renovation and expansion.
Although investment has poured into China’s roads and airports, its laggard railway system has not kept pace, causing holdups at the country’s ports and lengthy delays in the delivery of commodities.
Has anyone considered that the PRC is purchasing the latest and greated technology from both EMD and GE? It has been said that imitation is the greatest form of flattery but it is also the best way to reverse engineer a system. I really wi***hat EMD and GE woud reconsider this sale.
erikthered, you beat me to it. I wanted to say something about China one day supplying us with 300 locomotives. God! You gotta love that free trade stuff.
No James, this does not come close to balancing the trade deficit. Walmart alone imports more Chineese made goods than these locomotives are worth. Beside, once we sell them technology, they like to copy it. Whoops, there goes that market. Probably why the order is large, because it is a one time deal.
Vision, see the big picture. Think long term. You have much to learn grasshopper.
So what’s left to talk about on this thread if not the outsourcing and one sided so called free trade?? Do you want to read us type, “Hip Hip Hooray to the Chinese!” or “Us getting our products from China is a good thing. Just you watch …” I can milk toast the rest of my replies on this if it will appease to your senses.
Big Boy, I have a few photos of a Big Boy loco I’d like to send you, but your e-mail link is not accepting me. How do I get them to you?
Is this the first time GE have built locos outside the US?
I know EMD have built locos in India, S. Africa and are now talking about building locos at the Alsthom plant in Spain. (I don’t count the EWS class 67’s which were built at that plant in Spain as pure EMD as Alsthom had quite a big input into the design of these).b EMD have been talking for sometime about setting up a plant in the Eurozone (had Britain joined the Euro I think they’d have built the plant in Britain) and so having already teamed up with Alsthom for the class 67’s this move is the natural follow up. They’re also rumoured to be following up the class 66 with a 4000+hp diesel for the European market. I seem to recall that GE have teamed up with Siemens in Germany to build their “Blue Tiger” diesel loco prototype but I dont think they’ve sold very many.
Back in the 1960’s EMD teamed up with the Swedish car builder Nohab and supplied lots of locos to a number of European countries, including communist Hungary! Many of these locos are still running, open access operators have snapped them up whilst Belgium and Luxembourg have refurbuished and updated their examples.
Both GE and EMD have “won” large contracts to supply state of the art locomotives in China. In both cases manufacture will take place in China. Think of it, bright new state of the art factories, new electronics assembly facilities, wonderful new machine tools purchased to build these new units.
I might remind some of the readers that GM built a lot of B24 bombers during WW II. China is getting the better end of this deal and you can bet they will be one day offering fancy state of the art locomotives for sale in the US as well as the rest of the world.
Jim, you will just need to start off with a simple text email, by clicking on the icon at the bottom of my post. That email does work, since I’ve gotten mail from 3 different members today alone. I will reply directly to you, and then you should have a way to attach the pics. The problem is you can’t send attachments through Kalmbach’s mail forwarder.
Please make sure the files aren’t too large, or have them zipped or compressed, because I’m not sure how much space is left in my mailbox. If an attachment is too large it gets bounced.
Thanks, looking forward to seeing them.[:P][;)][8D]
They will copy it just as the Russians copied our earlier diesels. But the way the USA can stay competitive and will is by continual technological improvement, and this is being done by both EMD and GE. Note that the Chinese are not buying Russian diesels. At one time they did! If GM and GE continually innovate, and this is also true of Boeing, the USA will still export transportation equipment.
It is too bad EMD did not become independent before the LaGrange plant was knocked down and the land sold. If EMD had been independent, perhaps the production lines that did most to dieselize the USA would have been building the vast fleets of commuter railcars, subway cars, and light railcars that have foreign builders name plates all over the USA.
GE has been exporting locomotives beyond North America for a very long time. The Universal line dates back to 1954 or 1955 (before the U25B) and the shovel-noses (some of which had 244 engines) go back earlier. It has also had licensing arrangements with several overseas builders for a long time. Also remember that the Little Joes were originally intended for export to the Soviet Union.
Reverse engineering isn’t as easy as one might think. Air & Space magazine had an article sometime back about the reverse engineering of the Tu-4 from the B-29, and it required a substantial engineering and manufacturing effort by the Soviets.
I will never understand WHY we MUST trade with the CHI-COMS (Rush Limbaugh’s term for Chinese Communits), when they continue to abuse their own people. I refuse to buy anything from Walmart, because most of their merchandise is manufactured in China by people who’s working conditions would not be tollerated by you and I.
…Any sales to China will help but no, I doubt if many of us will stop showing our concern of the unbalanced trade…especially with China…! The goods coming into this country from them is mind boggling…It’s alarming to purchase something {anywhere}, and find then that it’s of course made in where else…China of course…We’re going down the tubes…slowly but accelerating. Those new engines can speed up the transport of goods to their port cities to load Wal-Mart’s purchases on the ocean going carriers to get it to us faster…Do we hear that sucking sound of jobs leaving…
It is just a matter of time before the chinese start building all of our railcars. Think about it all the are is just steel. they could supply intermodal, box cars,and tankcars. Grim prospect for the rail industry.
You answered a big part of your own question when you said Wal-Mart. I dont know if we can blame Wal-Mart directly , its the American mindset of getting things cheaper and cheaper that Wally World supplies, so doing business with questionable governments is just sauce for the goose.
PS I dont shop there either, besides killing American towns, its a JUNK store.[;)]