The tender to build a new railcar manufacturing and maintenance facility in Bellevue has been released to market, marking another milestone in Western Australia’s massive METRONET development.
The $50 million facility is set to bring back railcar manufacturing to the State for the first time since the old Midland Railway Workshops closed in 1994.
“The new manufacturing and assembly plant in Bellevue will bring railcar manufacturing back to WA and back to its home in the Midland area.
“It means hundreds of quality, local jobs, more training and apprenticeship opportunities for our kids and WA made trains, on our new WA built METRONET lines,” Premier Mark McGowan said.
The multi-million project will include the construction of a 180-metre-long main building for offices, workshops and storage. The new facility will have two overhead cranes that can lift up to 25 tonnes each as well as one heavy maintenance railroad that has a 10-tonne capacity crane. The project will also include the delivery of a secondary high-voltage testing building.
Once completed, the new Bellevue railcar facility will assemble and test about 246 railcars - 41 six-car sets. 102 of the railcars will be for METRONET projects and 144 will be replacing the ageing A-series fleet.
Approximately 200 direct long-term jobs are set to be supported by the construction of the new facility and railcars.
“This is the largest railcar order in WA history - we’ve done that deliberately to maximise competition for this large contract, thus maximising the amount of local content companies are willing to commit to.
“We’re committed to bringing back local manufacturing, and ensuring these new trains are built by local people. They’re our trains, and they should be our jobs as well,” Transport Minister Rita Saffioti said.
The tender to deliver the railcars is set to be awarded in November of this year, with final contract negotiations already underway with preferred builder Alstom - who is required to meet a target of 50 per cent local content.
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Source: Government of Western Australia; METRONET (1, 2); Railway-News