In 1900 the British Westinghouse Electrical & Manufacturing Co Ltd bought land in Trafford Park and built a factory which went into production in 1902 for the manufacture of mechanical and electrical equipment for the generation, transmission and use of electricity. In 1919, Trafford Park Works became owned by British Westinghouse’s successor, Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company (MV). The main shops, in common with factory construction throughout Trafford Park, were single floor type, with bays 1,000 feet in length, and had direct railway communication with the docks and trunk systems of the country. The main office block was a copy of the Westinghouse building in Pittsburgh, USA and the factory was to the American design and used imported steelwork for construction. Products manufactured at the Works included gas engines, stationary steam engines, electric generators, transformers, switchgear, meters, motors, control gear, and arc lamps. During the First World War, British Westinghouse built some small petrol-electric locomotives for the War Department Light Railways. In 1928 the Works were taken over by Associated Electrical Industries (AEI), which merged Metropolitan-Vickers and British Thomson-Houston, though these two companies continued their own trading names. Traction design and manufacture was always a minority of the workload at Trafford Park with the largest operations generally turbine manufacture. Very few vehicles were built there, and traction machines (i.e. motors, inductors and generators) were largely built in other places – notably at Sheffield or Rugby. Trafford Park traction manufacture was largely that of assembling control gear – contactors, switches, drivers’ controllers, camshaft controllers, relays etc. and building these into frames or equipment boxes for installation in vehicles made elsewhere. An important part of the Trafford Park Works site was the general switchgear operation, mainly for generation or distribution installations. The on-site Switchgear Testing Company was a “testing house” for these products and contributed to testing and development of traction circuit breakers and switchgear. During the Second World War MV acting for the Ministry of Aircraft Production produced more than a thousand Lancaster Bombers in the adjacent Mosley Road building. The company also manufactured war munitions and in the laboratories developed what became known as Radar. In 1959 the newly formed AEI Traction Division established its headquarters at Trafford Park, with a product range that included electric and diesel-electric locomotives; electrical equipment for tram-cars, trolley buses and trolley mining locomotives and traction motors. AEI was taken over by the General Electric Company (GEC) in 1967 whose Witton Works closed in 1969, with the design office and traction manufacture transferred to Trafford Park, as a result of the GEC reorganisation and mergers. GEC Traction Ltd took over the Works in 1972. In 1990 the former Low Voltage Switchgear site at Trafford Park (West Works) was renovated to be the new manufacturing facility for GEC Alsthom Traction, with an electronics workshop, machine shop and plating baths, and an assembly shop for switchgear, equipment cases and power modules. This building was vacated in 1998 when power modules and switchgear was moved to Tarbes in south west France. The Works housed the administrative, commercial and accounting functions, the majority of the design departments and the development section with its associated workshops and laboratories. The manufacturing area was devoted primarily to the production of components of traction control and railway signalling equipment. In 1993, as part of the rationalisation of the equipment group, it was announced that the headquarters of GEC Alsthom Traction would move to Preston, leaving only Power Module design and manufacture at Manchester, with the eventual closing of all activities at Trafford Park in 1998. The iconic original Westinghouse building was demolished and the site is now (2015) largely devoted to container handling and logistics operations.

In 1890 the Department of Works and Railways was separated into the Department of Works and Buildings and the Western Australian Government Railways (WAGR). Its headquarters were located in Perth. The network had stations in Perth, Kelmscott, Cannington and Welshpool. These lines were primarily opened to service the wheatbelt – an area which reaches north from Perth to the Mid-West region, and east to the Goldfields-Esperance region. In 1914 the function of tramways was added and the Department's title changed to Western Australian Government Railways and Tramways. The Western Australian Government Railways, Tramways & Ferries was abolished in 1949 and its functions dispersed into two new bodies, Western Australian Government Railways (WAGR) and Western Australian Government Tramways & Ferries. In September 1975, the WAGR adopted the trading name Westrail and created a logo. However, the official name of the WAGR was not changed at this point. The name Westrail was created simply to improve the company’s image. The new company headquarters were the Westrail Centre in the Perth terminal. On 17 December 2000, the Western Australian Government Railways (WAGR) freight division was sold to the Australian Railway Group along with the Westrail name and logo. The WAGR continued to operate as the Western Australian Government Railways Commission, until it was absorbed by the Public Transport Authority in 2003.