The same ideas that propelled companies like the Westinghouse Air Brake Company to flourish during the Gilded Age are being used more than a century later by the company’s successor, Wabtec Corp., in its latest venture near Pittsburgh International Airport.

In the 1880s, Westinghouse pioneered the railway airbrake and its Wilmerding complex manufactured the components of the brakes in one place.

The company’s successor, Wabtec, based on Pittsburgh’s North Shore, announced this week it is becoming an anchor tenant at Neighborhood 91, the additive manufacturing center at the Pittsburgh Airport Innovation Campus in Findlay Township.

It made the announcement at the same time it announced it was laying off about 150 workers at its Erie plant because of reduced operations attributed to the covid-19 pandemic.

“As the first development in the world to connect all elements of the additive manufacturing supply chain into a single location, Neighborhood 91 is the ideal location to fully realize the potential of this technology,” Wabtec Chief Technology Officer Eric Gebhardt said in a statement.

The company makes parts for railroad customers throughout the world. At the new location three Wabtec employees will use additive manufacturing — commonly known as 3D printing — to make parts from aluminum, Wabtec spokesman Tim Bader said.

What happened more than a century ago in Wilmerding is similar to what’s planned in Findlay, according to Airport Area Chamber of Commerce President Chris Heck.

“I love that vision, or that story, of this ecosystem,” Heck said.

Much like Westinghouse pioneered the air brake from its design to production in Wilmerding, Wabtec and other companies are pioneering using 3D printing to make things in one place. Those companies include Arencibia, a Lehigh County-based firm that recycles argon, helium and neon that’s used in the additive manufacturing processes.

Heck lauded Allegheny County Airport Authority CEO Christina Cassotis and other leaders for coming up with the idea of developing Neighborhood 91 into a worldwide 3D printing hub, where all of the things needed for the 3D printing process are produced and finished products are made.

“This right here completes the first cycle of that,” Heck said. “I think it’s fabulous that a Pittsburgh-based legacy company completes that cycle.”

Part of the airport’s role is to market the region on the world stage and Neighborhood 91 does that, Cassotis said in a statement.

“Neighborhood 91 is designed for industry leaders like Wabtec to advance the application of additive technologies for their customers,” Cassotis said.

By 2025, Wabtec intends to use additive manufacturing to produce more than 25,000 parts at its facilities across the world, including others in Erie and Grove City, Bader said.

In 2019, Wabtec designed more than 1,000 prototype parts and it is using about 1,500 parts that are made using 3D printing and used in locomotives, Bader said.

The company employs about 6,000 people in Western Pennsylvania and about 27,000 around the world.

Wabtec also announced this week about 150 layoffs at its Erie plant because of economic challenges it blamed on the covid-19 pandemic.

Railroad traffic is down 10% from last year and Wabtec is making the cuts “to align with today’s volume realities,” it said in a statement.

It means about 150 employees at its Erie plant will be laid off through the end of the year, according to the statement.

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