TIPTON, Ind. — Work has stopped on the hulking factory building along U.S. 31 where more than 1,000 people were expected to build transmissions.

About 1,500 workers, meanwhile, are on layoffs this week from Chrysler plants less than half an hour north in Kokomo along that same highway.

Those are just some of the signs of the troubles Indiana communities are facing as Detroit’s Big Three try to persuade Congress to provide billions of dollars in loans to keep them afloat.

Getrag Transmission Manufacturing LLC this week filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for $530 million plant it was building near Tipton. Work on the project had stopped after Chrysler pulled out of a financing agreement last month.

Getrag said 80 percent of the work had been finished on the 900,000-square-foot plant about 35 miles north of Indianapolis.

“Under the current economic conditions, I don’t think it will be completed,” Jason VanAlstine, an economist at Indiana University Kokomo, told the Kokomo Tribune. “In the long run, it will be.”

The big auto companies — General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler — have been seeking government loans totaling $25 billion to stay in business until spring. The three companies employ thousands of people across Indiana and thousands of others work for parts suppliers.

The sales slowdown that the automakers have seen has prompted Chrysler to place about 1,500 employees from two transmission plants in Kokomo on temporary layoffs this week, company spokesman Mary Beth Halprin.

“It’s all based on market demand,” Halprin said.

Rich Boruff, vice president of United Auto Workers Local 685, said workers from Kokomo’s four Chrysler plants have been placed on furlough at various times throughout the year.

“It’s no different than has happened in the past,” Boruff said this week’s shutdown. “Sales over the last year have declined.”

Halprin said Chrysler expected to recall the 1,500 workers Monday, but declined to comment on any possible future layoffs at Kokomo’s Chrysler plants.

Dave Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., said it was difficult to anticipate the fate of the Tipton plant, which Getrag had planned to have in operation in late 2009.

“The overpowering problem is the huge fall off in sales,” Cole said. “Everyone is looking to conserve cash. They are cutting everything they can.”