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September 9, 2025|Rapid Transit

Hitachi Opens $100MM ‘Digital’ Hagerstown Plant

Written by Dan Cupper, Contributing Editor; and Editor-Railroad History, Railway & Locomotive Historical Society
Three cars of a 78-car order for the Baltimore subway sytem pose on parallel shop tracks at Hitachi Rail's $100 million assembly plant near Hagerstown, Md., formally opened on Sept. 8, 2025.

With a dramatic sound-and-light show including pulsating LEDs, music, videos and puffs of smoke in a darkened theater setting, officers of Hitachi Rail cut the ribbon Monday, Sept. 8, on a $100 million railcar assembly plant in a suburb of Hagerstown, Md.

Entrance of Hitachi Rail’s $100 million railcar assembly plant on Halfway Boulevard just outside Hagerstown, Md. Sept. 8, 2025.

Lasting 90 minutes, the program comprised a parade of speakers representing various Hitachi companies, suppliers and elected and appointed officials; proceeded through a panel discussion; and ended with a Kobuki drop, when curtains on both sides of the seating area suddenly fell to the floor on cue.

Toshiaki Higashihara, executive chairman of Hitachi, Ltd., speaks at opening ceremonies for the new plant. Sept. 8, 2025.

The reveal disclosed that the 200-plus attendees were in fact sitting in the midst of a factory floor, surrounded by illuminated, gleaming, partially completed subway cars for the Baltimore and Washington D.C. transit systems.

Hitachi Rail Group CEO Giuseppe Marino speaks in front of a projected aerial image of the $100 milllion assembly plant near Hagerstown, Md., which formally opened on Monday, Sept. 8.

Proud to show off their artificial-intelligence-driven factory, Hitachi officials led guests and press on tours of the cars, currently under construction for WMATA (Washington Area Metropolitan Transit Authority, or Metro), and the Maryland Department of Transportation Maryland Transit Administration. The 307,000-square-foot plant sits on 41 acres of land southwest of Hagerstown. In full production, it’s expected to turn out 20 cars per month.

Officials have just cut the ribbon, and the curtains have dropped to reveal subway cars under construction, to mark the official opening of Hitachi Rail’s $100 milllion assembly plant near Hagerstown, Md., on Sept. 8, 2025.

Describing the plant as a “carbon-neutral” and “zero-landfill-waste” facility, officials said it employs 200 people, expected to rise to an estimated 460 by 2027. In all, they said, it will support 1,300 jobs with an annual economic impact of $350 million.

Under construction for 2-1/2 years, the plant replaces Hitachi’s Miami facility, opened in 2016 and closed in 2024. Some workers transferred to Hagerstown, which now becomes the firm’s sole U.S. assembly plant. Carbody shells are fabricated elsewhere, in some cases overseas, then trucked to the plant for installation of interiors, cabs and electrical and HVAC gear. Once mounted on trucks, they are taken for a spin on an 800-yard-long test track.

Trucks and carbodies alike are moved around the shop floor with the use of motorized dollies called Automated Guided Vehicles. Hagerstown, Md., Sept. 8, 2025.

Besides carbody jacks, the shop workplace is equipped with a single 17.6-ton overhead crane and four motorized, laser-guided dollies called AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles) that can move carbodies or trucks.

In a demonstration for visitors, a Boston Dynamics robotic “dog” prances around the shop floor at Hitachi’s Rail’s new $100 million factory near Hagerstown, Md., on Sept. 8, 2025. By night, the device conducts camera inspections of completed work on subway cars, reporting any defects or cracks to be remedied by the daylight workforce.

Officials demonstrated one of two AI-controlled Boston Dynamics robot “dogs” that patrol the site by night, conducting inspections of the railcars under construction. Using cameras, they report any issues that need correction when the human factory workers arrive the next day. The robots can detect a defect or crack as tiny as 0.1 millimeter.

View looking down an assembly corridor at the $100 million Hitachi railcar assembly building near Hagerstown, Md., on Sept. 8, 2025.

Hitachi also employs AI technology to enhance worker health and safety, through a collision avoidance detection system. If a person approaches the path of a motorized vehicle on the shop floor, it will slow and then stop before striking the person. At the same time, the person wears a pocket-sized unit that warns him or her that a moving vehicle is nearby.

Ian Cruickshank, electrical team lead at Hitachi Rail’s $100 million rail vehicle assembly plant near Hagerstown, Md., displays a wearable exoskeleton that relieves muscle strain when working with arms above one’s head. Sept. 8, 2025.
Luis Arango, an undercar mechanic, demonstrates the use of a passive-assist exoskeleton, which attaches to his back, arms and waist, to relieve the fatigue brought on by working with arms held high. Workers wear the devices for underframe work and installation of wiring in the car interior walls, which without an exoskelton is equally uncomfortable to handle for long periods of time.

While currently working on bookings only for subway cars, the plant will be capable of producing a wide range of passenger vehicles, officials said, including light rail, heavy rail (metro), regional/commuter and high-speed rail.

Representing upper management at the event were Hitachi Ltd. Executive Chairman Toshiaki Higashihara and President and CEO Toshiaki Tokunaga, and Hitachi Rail Group CEO Giuseppe Marino. Also on the program were Maryland Lieutenant Gov. Aruna Miller, WMATA General Manager and CEO Randy Clarke, and MTA  Administrator Holly Arnold. Sidelined by COVID, U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) used a videotaped message to remind the crowd that scheduled U.S. rail passenger service began in Maryland with the opening of the pioneering Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in 1827.

Interactive Customer Experience Center

Hitachi Customer Experience Center stands at the entrance to the new railcar assembly factory near Hagerstown, Md. Sept. 8, 2025.

A distinctive feature of the site is the stand-alone Customer Experience Center, which offers immersive displays and interactive experiences to show off, among other wares, Hitachi’s AI capabilities, marketed under the brand name HMAX, produced elsewhere in collaboration with the international AI firm NVIDIA.

Antonio Martorana, product manager for Hitachi’s U.S. Market Rolling Stock and Engineering Department, guides a visitor through the interactive experience of running a virtual Washington Metro Blue Line subway train in the new factory’s digital Customer Experience Center.

HMAX uses detection devices to monitor conditions or parts, with the data then analyzed to predict and avert possible equipment failures. The system, or “platform,” examines trains, signaling and infrastructure to minimize downtime and heighten reliability. Among the functions showcased in the customer center:

  • A subway car operator cab simulator, where visitors can try their hand at running a train – in this case, WMATA.
  • Demonstrations of AI monitoring systems to check catenary-pantograph interface.
  • Demonstrations of an AI system to direct waiting passengers to least-crowded areas of an arriving train, monitored in real time.
  • An avatar that answers spoken questions about Hitachi products and services.
  • A small video theater.

Washington Metro

Mockup of WMATA’s 256-unit order for 8000-series cars at the new $100 million Hitachi plant near Hagerstown, Md.,opened Sept. 8, 2025.

Hitachi is assembling 256 8000 Series cars for WMATA under a $713 million contract that includes a two-year warranty, parts, tools, training manuals and a cab simulator. WMATA operates a 128-mile system serving 98 stations on six routes in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, carrying 668,000 weekday riders.

Randy Clarke, General Manager and CEO of Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, speaks next to a married-pair mockup of cars 8000-8001 that had previously been on display on the National Mall in the District of Columbia. Sept. 8, 2025.

WMATA’s Clarke said the order will replace the agency’s fleet of 284 3000 Series Breda-built cars dating from 1987, improving reliability and customer amenities. He spoke beside a mockup of a two-car set that Hitachi had previously exhibited on Washington’s National Mall.

Looking toward the coupled end of the married-pair set of mockup WMATA cars 8001-8000 on display inside the Hitachi Rail assembly building near Hagerstown, Md , Sept. 8, 2025.

WMATA awarded the contract to Hitachi after Congress disqualified the Chinese SOE (state-owned enterprise) CRRC over concerns that the cars might carry government-installed spyware, a high-level security issue for a transit system in the nation‘s capital.

Baltimore Subway

Three cars of a 78-car order for the Baltimore subway system pose on parallel shop tracks at Hitachi Rail’s $100 million assembly plant near Hagerstown, Md., formally opened on Sept. 8, 2025.

Worth $300 million, the Baltimore contract is for construction of 78 cars to replace all of the 31-mile system’s original 1983-era rolling stock, and replacement of the track-circuit-based signal system with CBTC (communications-based train control). Six cars have been tested over the past 18 months, with the entire fleet set to be delivered in 12 to 18 months, according to MTA’s Arnold.

Car production began in the now-closed Miami facility, with the bulk of the work now being handled at the new plant. Signaling components were produced at Hitachi’s South Carolina facility, the legacy remnant of the former Union Switch & Signal Co. of Swissvale, Pa.

Maryland Transit Administrator Holly Arnold briefs reporters on the order for 78 subway cars (including this one) being completed at Hitachi Rail’s new plant near Hagerstown, Md. Sept. 8, 2025.

Baltimore’s Metro SubwayLink, running 15.4 miles from Johns Hopkins Hospital to Owings Mills, Md., in the northwest suburbs, carries 15,000 riders a day. Replacement of the signal system with CBTC will allow current eight- to 10-minute headways to be cut to three or four minutes. With digital technology, Arnold said, CBTC means that “We can see every train at all times.”

In addition to the Baltimore and Washington orders, the plant will be constructing 200 M5 cars under a $725 million contract for Philadelphia’s Market-Frankford subway-elevated line, operated by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA). The cars are expected to arrive in 2029. In addition, the plant will build cars for a new 9.7-mile-long subway route in Toronto, the Metrolinx Ontario Line. All told, the four contracts represent $2.2 billion in railcar assembly work.