U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville announced Monday that a former railroad car manufacturing facility in Colbert County will become a submarine parts plant he says could bring up to 1,500 jobs to northwest Alabama.

Tuberville (R-Auburn) made the announcement during a Washington Update at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, telling the crowd that the 2.2 million-square-foot facility once churned out railroad cars before the work moved to Mexico. The Retirement Systems of Alabama previously owned the property.

“It’s going to be one of a kind,” Tuberville said. “This will put thousands of manufacturing jobs back in America and back in Alabama.”

Tuberville said workers will transform the plant into an AI-driven precision manufacturing facility producing submarine components. Mobile-based shipbuilder Austal, which already builds submarines for the Navy, will play a role in the project, he said.

“The reason we can make them here in Muscle Shoals — you can put whatever you make on a barge and you can ship it down the river,” Tuberville said. “The Defense Department found that intriguing.”

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law last year, provided funding for the facility. Tuberville credited President Trump’s push to reshore submarine and ship manufacturing as the driving force behind the project.

“This is President Trump’s dream of moving submarine and ship manufacturing back to the United States of America,” Tuberville said.

U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Haleyville) set the ribbon cutting for March 20. Tuberville said Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of the Navy John Phelan plan to attend, and he expressed hope that Trump would join them.

“This 2.2 million square foot facility will now be a symbol of U.S. defense, anchoring shipbuilding and maritime production in Northwest Alabama,” Aderholt said in a statement.