Wabtec Corporation interns stepped away from their day-to-day work Wednesday to give back to the Erie community, helping with maintenance efforts aboard the historic U.S. Brig Niagara.
The volunteer opportunity allowed interns to gain hands-on experience while supporting one of Erie’s most recognizable landmarks. The group helped offload items from the ship and moved equipment and other vessel materials into storage areas beneath the Erie Maritime Museum.
For many of the interns, the experience provided a unique opportunity to connect with the community they are working in this summer.
“This is like no other, community service is always a great thing and doing it with work and the community that we have as interns and everything we do from hands-on on the floor in the shops to even building 10 on our local site from here its so vastly different and it’s just amazing all around,” said Alec Eisert, an intern at Wabtec
Wabtec has 160 interns this summer, with the Erie site hosting 45, the most for any site throughout the company. The interns helped offload items from the ship and also helped move some vessel items into a storage area under the Erie Maritime Museum. For Wabtec officials they said this is a great way to help interns working with the organization from out of town, to understand the vast history of Erie
“I think its just important, some of our interns are not from Erie, so to bring them down here, a lot of them got to experience some really cool things this summer, said Stephanie Spence, Wabtec Corporation human resource and talent acquisition manager. “The Big Boy coming through which is near and dear to our heart in the railroad industry. Then having the Niagara come back in this summer, especially the kids that are not from here, got to experience that.