Rebuilding the manufacturing expertise for streetcars in the United States

When DC first proposed a big streetcar initiative, I suggested that like the joint venture in New Orleans which produced the cars for the Canal Street streetcar line in New Orleans, DC could work to do the same thing, perhaps in the vicinity of the Ivy City railyard that is used by Amtrak and WMATA. (The BET television building on the north side of the tracks would be a good building to convert. Likely most of its operations have decamped to NYC, since the BET cable television network is no longer based in DC.)

I wrote about it in this blog entry, "DC as a center of streetcar manufacturing excellence?," which was mentioned in a column in the Washington Examiner at the time, but first in this entry, "Use it or lose it or you have to recreate it (U.S. streetcar technology and expertise)."

Meanwhile, the Oregon Iron Works, with the support of Rep. Earl Blumenaur, has received federal dollars to set up streetcar manufacturing capabilities, their having already acquired a license from Inekon to reproduce their streetcar model, the one already used in Portland, Oregon.

The Overhead Wire calls our attention to the Portland Transport blogmention and photos of the first streetcar under construction by Oregon Iron Works. See "Streetcars Start Rolling Off Assembly Line at Oregon Iron Works."