The story
The company's origins go back to 1869 with the founding of the Westinghouse Air Brake Company. That company (known as WA&B and later also as WABCO) became independent in 1990 via a management buy-out, and went public in 1995. (Another company, WABCO Vehicle Control Systems, also created from the Westinghouse Brake Company, is independent of Wabtec. It was spun off by American Standard Companies in 2007, and is today part of German automotive components firm ZF Friedrichshafen.)
The other company forming Wabtec, MotivePower, can be traced back to 1972, with the formation of the MK Rail division by Morrison Knudsen and the purchase of a manufacturing facility in Boise. In 1994 Morrison Knudsen created a subsidiary MK Rail Corporation; during the first half of the same decade the MK Rail group expanded with the acquisition of various other locomotive component companies. In 1996, MK Rail group separated from the parent Morrison Knudsen and adopted the name MotivePower Industries Corporation. In the later half of the 1990s additional companies were acquired – again all in the locomotive components business. MotivePower, a wholly owned subsidiary of Wabtec, continues to manufacture locomotives.
The corporate logo is said to represent an axial view of a mechanical brake valve, where different air ports line up between the 'stator' and 'rotor' depending upon the handle position.
On June 10, 2023, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America workers at Wabtec's Erie, Pennsylvania, plant went on strike. Issues included pay, healthcare benefits, paid time off, prohibitions on grievance strikes, and the number of tier-4 emission rules compliant locomotives built at the Erie plant. The strike ended on August 31 with an agreement that raised the pay of workers.
From Wikipedia’s article on Wabtec, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7