For decades, General Motors was king of the highway and queen of the rails. In addition to mass-producing buses, cars and trucks, the automaker was once the largest locomotive builder in the world. At a massive factory just west of Chicago, GM’s Electro-Motive Division (EMD) assembled powerful machines that helped transition American railroads from steam to diesel.

TOKYO—Toshiba Infrastructure Systems & Solutions Corporation has won a $368 million contract to build 68 electric locomotives for the Taiwan Railways Administration, with delivery beginning in 2022.