Amtrak’s Airo Trains Begin Rolling Out From Sacramento Factory

In the outer, car‑centric reaches of Sacramento, the 60‑acre, 2,500‑employee Siemens Mobility plant is assembling Airo, Amtrak’s newest fleet, piece by piece. Airo trains will debut this summer on the Cascades route in the Pacific Northwest, with more than a dozen East Coast routes beginning next year, including the Northeast Regional, the Carolinian, the Pennsylvanian and the Vermonter.

They are not faster than the trains they replace — their top speed is 125 miles per hour — but they offer sleeker interiors, grab‑and‑go food and more accessible designs. Amtrak has ordered 83 Airo trains for $8 billion; they will be built in Sacramento and at a factory in North Carolina.

Production moves from a harness room, where each passenger car’s more than 30 miles of wiring is labeled, cut and checked by hand, to the coach weld area, where automated machinery performs about 30,000 spot welds per car. Each train contains more than 3,500 parts made by nearly 100 suppliers across 31 states.

United States, Sacramento

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