WATERTOWN — New York Air Brake Corp. has grown its workforce in the past two years with new products and systems to make North American freight railroads “safer and more productive.” New York Air Brake (NYAB) supplies the freight-railroad industry with air-brake control systems and components, electronically controlled braking systems, foundation brakes, training simulators, and […]
WATERTOWN — New York Air Brake Corp. has grown its workforce in the past two years with new products and systems to make North American freight railroads “safer and more productive.”
New York Air Brake (NYAB) supplies the freight-railroad industry with air-brake control systems and components, electronically controlled braking systems, foundation brakes, training simulators, and train-handling systems.
The Watertown–based manufacturer employs more than 850 people in six locations, including about 530 at its local headquarters.
The company has added about 100 employees over the past year-and-a-half at the Watertown facility to support the expansion of products and the increase in customer volumes, says Michael Hawthorne, president of NYAB.
He spoke with the Business Journal News Network on Sept. 16.
Besides its Watertown work force, New York Air Brake also employs an additional 335 workers between locations in Texas, Illinois, North Carolina, Missouri and in the Canadian province of Ontario.
Company products
NYAB’s Watertown work force manufactures brake-control, air-supply, and bogie-equipment products, while teams of designers work to engineer products that outperform existing technology, the company said in a Sept. 10 news release.
Bogie is what Europeans refer to as the undercarriage for a railway car, says Hawthorne, noting it involves two axles, four wheels, two side frames, and a bolster.
In the U.S., the same equipment is called a truck, and a rail car usually sits on two trucks, he adds.
The air-supply product is new to the NYAB portfolio, and its production has “started to lift up” the company’s employment figure, says Hawthorne.
“There’s a lot of material that needs to be managed for it to be built successfully, so there’s a ripple effect on demand for human resources or labor to produce the air-supply products,” he adds.
Besides those products, NYAB beginning Oct. 1 will manufacture a new and “safer” air-brake control valve that ensures constant air pressure available to activate freight-car brakes, “regardless of how long or how hard the engineer applies the brakes,” according to the company’s news release.
The new train-control product, called the DB-60 II, is the “most significant improvement” to pneumatic air-brake control valves in 40 years, Hawthorne contends.
DB-60 II, or the second generation of NYAB’s flagship control value, is adding a feature called brake-cylinder maintaining.
Every pneumatic system leaks, and a leak in the brake cylinder can result in a loss braking ability on a railway car.
“What we’ve done is create a feature in the brake valve, [or the] the control valve that detects that leak and will correct for it, so it maintains higher levels of brake effort, even if you have a leaking brake cylinder,” he says.
NYAB is also developing an automated parking brake that will help reduce the chances that a parked train rolls away out of control, the company said.
Customers
New York Air Brake’s customers include Fort Worth, Texas–based Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway; Montreal, Quebec–based Canadian National Railway
Company (NYSE: CNI); Calgary, Albert–based Canadian Pacific Railway Limited (NYSE: CP); Jacksonville, Fla.–based CSX Transportation (NYSE: CSX); Kansas City, Mo.–based Kansas City Southern Railway Co. (NYSE: KSU); Norfolk, Va.–based Norfolk Southern Corp. (NYSE: NSC), and Omaha, Neb.–based Union Pacific Railroad (NYSE: UNP).
A majority of the company’s business comes from North-American customers, but “increasing” exports to freight-rail customers in Europe, Australia, China, South Africa, and Brazil represent a “growing part” of the company’s portfolio, NYAB said in the news release.
NYAB generated about $290 million in revenue in 2013 and is projecting $285 million in 2014, according to CNYBJ Research.
The firm spends about 10 percent or more of its annual revenue on research and development activities, says Hawthorne.
Founded in 1890, NYAB will mark its 125th year in operation in 2015. Some of its current Watertown employees are third- and fourth-generation workers, the company notes in the news release.
The firm is now a member of the Munich, Germany–based Knorr-Bremse Group, a manufacturer of braking systems for rail and commercial vehicles.
The German brake company acquired NYAB in 1991.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com