BANGOR – Because of a local increase in the railroad servicing business, AC Electric Corp. of Auburn is investing $1.5 million to double its facility at the Target Industrial Circle in Bangor.

Company officials also plan to hire three new electric motor technicians to help with the increasing workload.

“Business is good,” AC Electric President and CEO Daniel Parsons said Thursday.

The railroad servicing marks a change in direction for the company, which specializes in repairing industrial motors. AC Electric used to service the motors for paper mills, but officials said that that work has slowed down in recent years.

“Our growth, for the Bangor shop, has been the work for the railroads. We’re very excited about it,” Parsons said Thursday. “We only started doing it five years ago, and it’s become a major part of the business.”

The company has 47 employees across the state and will double the size of its Bangor building from 12,000 square feet to 24,000 square feet. The work, which is contracted through the Sheridan Corp. with the help of local subcontractors, should be completed by April, Parsons said.

He said the company would hire the three new technicians sooner if it could.

“We’re so cramped on space we don’t have room for them now,” Parsons said. “That space is badly needed. We want it so we can be more efficient.”

Work from the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway Inc. has filled up the company’s facility. The rail company’s yard in the Derby section of Milo rebuilds locomotives and ships them to clients all over the world, including to Panama and Poland. The AC Electric team services many of the locomotive motors, and Stephen Greene of Montreal, Maine and Atlantic said it has been a good match for his company.

“I’m ecstatic with the work of AC Electric,” Greene said. “They are one of our best contractors. We haven’t had any failures of equipment in the equipment that they rebuilt for us and we sent overseas, and that is amazing.”

The new positions at AC Electric ideally will be filled by people with experience in “electromechanical technologies,” Parsons said. But the company would be satisfied by someone with a lot of mechanical experience and an interest in learning about locomotives.

“The learning curve is not that great between the auto technician and the electric motor technician,” Parsons said. “It’s a really nice fit.

acurtis@bangordailynews.net

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