HAGERSTOWN, Md. — Hitachi Rail opened its new $100 million railcar factory in Maryland on Monday (Sept. 8, 2025), designed to deliver up to 20 railcars per month.
The 307,000-square-foot factory, which will employ 460 workers and is credited with supporting 1,300 jobs in total, features more than $30 million in digital enhancements, including artificial intelligence and other smart manufacturing technologies. The carbon-neutral facility says it will operate with zero landfill waste from day one.
“The Hagerstown factory showcases the unique strengths of the Hitachi Group by integrating manufacturing expertise and digital and AI technologies across a wide range of our business domains as True One Hitachi,” Hitachi Ltd. CEO Toshiaki Tokunaga said in a press release marking the plant opening. “We will deliver ever greater value to our customers and society by addressing infrastructure and mobility challenges in the United States.”
The factory will help fulfill three major equipment orders from the region: 256 cars for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s Metrorail; 200 cars for the Southeastern Pennsylvnania Transportation Authority, and 78 cars for the Maryland Transit Authority for the Baltimore Metro SubwayLink. The vast majority of these cars will be built in Hagerstown, except for a small number of test trains to be built at other Hitachi Rail facilities.
Hitachi announced plans for the factory in 2022 after landing the WMATA contract [see “Hitachi Rail to build new factory …,” Trains.com, March 20, 2022].
February 2025 Google Earth aerial photo of plant shows new railway vehicle test tracks but no rail siding connection to either CSX or NS so I guess finished vehicles will get trucked to their customers which aren’t that far away at DC, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.
Yeah, that seems really odd. Why build something as large and heavy as a subway car and then slap it on a truck? Weird.