State lawmakers and area development and government officials on Thursday toured Trinity Industries Inc.'s closed north of plant in Greenville and drove by the nearby south plant in Hempfield Township.

The former Greenville Rail Car Division plants closed in late 2000.

"We're trying to make a statement that our state and local leaders are extremely interested in marketing this property, moving forward to find tenants for it and seeing that it becomes productive again," said state Sen. Robert D. "Bob" Robbins, Salem Township, R-50th District.

Larry Reichard, executive director of the Mercer-based Penn-Northwest Development Corp., said, "There has been regular communication between our office and the real estate department of Trinity since November 2000. The lines of communication have been open."

Reichard said talks with the Dallas-based company have been positive, and the company appears to be "a willing seller" of the Greenville-area plants.

Reichard said that interest from potential buyers of the local plants and property has been "somewhat encouraging," but there have been no firm commitments to date. "There has been a different mix," Reichard said of the interested parties, adding that none of the inquiries have come from companies in the rail-car production industry.

The tour -- led by facilities manager Mike Gardner --was an invitation-only event but the invitees, including members of the media, were not allowed to take photographs inside the north plant.

There are about 800,000 square feet underneath roofs at the north and south plants and the plants sit on a combined 90 acres.

Each year Robbins leads a group of state lawmakers on a tour throughout his district, and this year's tour included the Trinity stop. Among the colleagues who accompanied Robbins was state Sen. David J. Brightbill, the Senate majority leader and original author of legislation that has spurred environmental cleanup and redevelopment of more than 1,000 industrial sites across the state over the past seven years.

The preliminary judgement of the state Department of Environmental Protection has been that the plants do not have substantial environmental problems, Brightbill said.

As recently as four years ago, Trinity was Mercer County's largest industrial employer with about 2,000 workers. That year the local plant increased its work force by 1,000 workers as demand for rail cars soared, but employment slid as orders waned.

When the company announced the plant closings in October 2000, the Greenville division employed fewer than 100 workers.

Trinity bought the plants in Greenville and Hempfield Township from Ampco Pittsburgh Corp. in 1986. At the time, the operation was in a severe slump and employed only a few dozen.

Building rail cars under different owners going back to 1914, the Greenville operation was among the older industrial sites in Mercer County.