Trains for Historic High-Speed Rail to Be Built in New Upstate NY Factory

Plans are in-place for a massive factory to be built in Upstate New York, one that will aid in the creation of a new high-speed rail line on the West Coast.

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As reported by The Associated Press and shared by New York Upstate, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Monday that a new train factory will be constructed in the town of Horseheads, NY.

The factory will be used to construct the locomotives that will travel along the first true high-speed rail line, which will run between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The entire project has a targeted end date of 2028, ahead of that year's Summer Olympic Games.

READ MORE: Construction Underway on ‘Northeast’s Largest Dairy Factory’ in Upstate NY

Specific to the factory, Siemens Mobility will construct the American Pioneer 220 trains at a 300,000-square-foot (28,000-square-meter), per New York Upstate. The factory is expected to open, and begin construction, in 2026.

On the rail line itself, New York Upstate shares that it will extend 218 miles along the Interstate 15 corridor between Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga, California, where it will link to a commuter rail connection to downtown Los Angeles. The total construction cost is estimated at $12 billion.

Here's the real eye-popping statistic: it will reach speeds of 186 mph (300 kph).

Specific to the local community, around 300 jobs are expected to be created in the Horseheads area. Horseheads has a population of 6,606 people (as of 2020), and sits just north of the New York-Pennsylvania border in Chemung County.