IN a brief statement issued on February 26, US locomotive manufacturers Progress Rail and Wabtec announced that they have reached a settlement in the lawsuit filed by Progress Rail in September 2023, accusing its competitor Wabtec of abusing its market power in the supply of mainline diesel locomotives, equipment and services.

“The parties agree that this settlement is best for both companies, customers, and consumers, and the prospect of additional litigation is not in anyone’s interest,” the statement says. “There is no admission of liability.”

In its lawsuit, Progress Rail alleged that Wabtec “has profited, and continues to profit, from its unlawful, exclusionary conduct, to the detriment of consumers.” It asserted that the competitive balance “critical to the freight locomotive industry” was disrupted when Wabtec acquired locomotive manufacturer GE Transportation for $US 11bn in 2019.

“That combination merged the sole supplier of certain key freight locomotive inputs, Wabtec, with the dominant supplier of finished freight locomotives and other cab technologies, GE Transportation,” the lawsuit said. “It created a vertically-integrated entity with dominant positions in multiple products and the incentive and ability to engage in anticompetitive exclusionary conduct to harm the competitive process and consumers.”

According to the lawsuit, Wabtec has supplied approximately 75% of active diesel long-haul freight locomotives in North America, and approximately 90% of new long-haul freight locomotives complying with the latest US Tier 4 emissions regulations.

In response, Wabtec told our US sister publication Railway Age that the lawsuit was at its core “an unsupported attack on the merger of Wabtec and GE Transportation,” which had provided “benefits to the entire industry.”

“We also firmly believe that Progress Rail’s assertions that Wabtec breached agreements or engaged in other illegal conduct are wrong,” Wabtec said. “We intend to aggressively defend the case in court.”

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