Ornans is the most unlikely location to find a major railway manufacturing facility, with the village a major tourist location nestling in the Loue valley in the foothills of the Jura mountains.
The factory originally belonged to Oerlikon, who supplied the electrical equipment for the Metropolitan Carriage & Wagon trains introduced on LNWR London suburban routes from 1915 onwards. Hence, Ornans traction motors have a proud heritage on Metro Cammell trains operating out of London Euston, dating back more than 100 years!
And not even rail-connected - the nearest rail facility is about 10km away, with Besançon a bit further.
Another historical link that always fascinated me was that the factory I knew as English Electric Stafford (later GEC, then Alstom) was originally the Stafford Dynamo Works and was owned by Siemens before WW1 when it was requisitioned by the government and later sold to EE.
The access road was until recently called Siemens Road.
The factory under Siemens supplied the traction equipment to the NER for its Tyneside electric network.
Like EE's Vulcan Foundry the whole site, which was a prominent landmark from the nearby WCML, has been demolished and the last owner (US GE) now has minimal presence in the town.
As a engineering site making power station equipment, it was the origin of the road transporter carrying a transformer which stalled on the North Staffs line at Hixon level crossing in 1968, causing the horrific train crash which killed 11.
And while we are looking at origins of railway equipment, many of today's new UK EMUs from CAF and Stadler are powered by traction equipment from TSA - Traktionssysteme Austria.
TSA is based at Brown-Boveri-Strasse 1 in Vienna, so you can guess the origin of the site.
The new Alstom has the challenge of integrating the old Alstom and Bombardier traction production - Bombardier used the former ABB plant at Västerås, Sweden.
Presumably the Hitachi-Alstom HS2 stock will be powered by Japanese electrics, like the 80x series.
From what I can make out, Trenitalia's Frecciarossa 1000 (today manufactured by Hitachi), and touted as the basis for the HS2 design, uses Bombardier electrics.
