Gov. Charlie Baker peered out the window of CRRC’s massive factory here Tuesday as the first of the Springfield-built MBTA Orange Line cars zipped by.

“That is pretty cool,” he said as his hosts directed his attention to the employees gathered around.

It was a trip of a few seconds on CRRC’s quarter-mile test track. But it was also a momentous step forward for Chinese-owned CRRC, for its customer the MBTA and for Springfield, which won the statewide competition to host the $95-million factory with 126 employees.

“This is about bringing the T into the 21st Century,” Baker said.

MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said the new Orange Line cars will start operating in early 2019, at least as a pilot train.

The new cars will replace ones that are about 40 years old, some with more than 2 million miles of service. The new cars will allow for more passenger capacity, as they can be operated closer together and thus more frequently.

Tuesday was also, as Springfield Mayor Domenic J. Sarno said, a bit of back-to-the future.

“We are bringing manufacturing back to Springfield,” he said.

Wason Manufacturing was a leading maker of rail cars in the city until the Great Depression.

The CRRC plant is on the site of what was a Westinghouse Electric plant.

In 2014, CRRC received a $566 million contract from the MBTA to build 152 Orange Line cars and 252 Red Line cars at the Page Boulevard site. In December 2016, the state upped the order with another 120 new Red Line cars, with production set to begin in June 2022 at a cost of $277 million.

Massachusetts went without federal funding on the cars so that it could mandate that they be assembled in Massachusetts. The idea was to foster an industry of making rail cars in Massachusetts.

Production began on the first Orange Line Cars in April, and will begin making Red Line cars in 2019.

When the factory is fully ramped up in 2021, it’ll be making four distinct cars for three cities: the Red and Orange lines in Boston, SEPTA in Philadelphia and the transit system in Los Angeles.

Officials from Los Angeles and Philadelphia were at Tuesday’s event.

Los Angeles has ordered 64 new subway cars at a cost of $178.4 million, with an option for 218 more beginning in 2021.

CRRC will build 45 double-decker train cars for SEPTA, Greater Philadelphia’s transit system, for $137.5 million. SEPTA has an option to purchase 10 additional cars after that.

The cars come to Springfield is steel shells. Workers here install all the wiring, motors, wheels, assemblies and interiors.

Completing each car takes 23 working days.

When it ramps up to full production here, CRRC expects to have about 200 production workers in Springfield. CRRC said production jobs will pay $55,000 to $60,000 a year.