Domestic Rail Car Industry Has Virtually Disappeared : Transit: Only one U.S.-owned firm makes the vehicles today, compared to six or more 25 years ago. Automobiles and foreign competition are blamed.

When the Bay Area launched its gleaming BART subway system in 1972, the sleek cars that sped along the tracks were made in the United States by Rohr Industries of Chula Vista.

A decade later, when Bay Area transit officials went looking for 150 additional cars, Rohr had abandoned the money-losing subway business. Who ended up winning the $228-million contract? Alsthom Atlantique of France.

“We made very extensive approaches to heavy equipment manufacturers in the United States” to make a bid, said Sy Mouber, a spokesman for the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District. “But none of them were interested.”

The controversy over the selection of a Japanese firm to build Metro Green Line trains--a move since overturned--has rekindled interest in domestic building of rail cars. But the domestic industry has nearly disappeared, falling victim to the popularity of the automobile and the growth of foreign competitors.

Only a single U.S.-owned firm makes rail passenger cars today--compared to at least half a dozen 25 years ago--and there are no domestic manufacturers to compete with the new generation of high-speed trains being produced by the French, Japanese and Germans.

Despite new light-rail projects across the nation and increased federal monies for mass transit, many transportation experts say there is not enough domestic demand to attract American newcomers to a business that was never considered all that lucrative.

“I look at all the major transit systems and I don’t see any enormous car orders now,” said Frank Cihak, chief engineer with the American Public Transit Assn., a Washington-based trade group.

The domestic rail passenger car business peaked more than 40 years ago when Pacific Electric Red Car trolleys rattled across Southern California and passenger trains dominated long-distance travel. The manufacturers hailed mostly from the East and Midwest: Budd Co. of Pennsylvania, St. Louis Car Co. of Missouri and Pullman Standard Co. of Illinois.

But the American love affair with the automobile and the growth of the airline industry began to take a heavy toll on rail passenger car makers in the years after World War II. Cities replaced trolleys with diesel-powered buses and the railroads abandoned passenger service.

Years would pass between the awarding of major contracts for new rail cars and even then train builders failed to develop a standard, cost-efficient transit model that could be sold to municipalities nationwide. A New York subway car, for example, could not run in Chicago without major modifications.

“It was never a real lucrative business and it was limited in size,” said Robert A. Matthews, president of the Railway Progress Institute, which is made up of railroad industry supply firms. “It was never a big enough business to maintain a company that just built subway cars.”

Meanwhile, overseas, the Europeans and Japanese rebuilt and expanded rail service, providing car manufacturers with a strong domestic market from which to expand internationally.

“The Europeans never allowed their passenger rail lines to be shut down like we did,” said Gary Hallman, an executive with Montreal-based Bombardier, the largest maker of passenger rail cars in North America.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, it seemed that the domestic industry was poised for recovery. Cities such as San Francisco and Washington were preparing to build new, sophisticated subways that attracted the attention of aerospace firms such as Rohr. But the company soon soured on the industry.

Rohr developed the Bay Area rail cars and tried to sell the design to transportation planners for the nation’s capital. But Washington officials had their own ideas and Rohr had to develop a totally new car. Then the firm tried and failed to sell either version to Atlanta in the early 1970s.

“That’s when we exited the business,” said Rohr spokesman John Walsh.

“At one time we thought that we could design a rail car system and then be able to sell that same car to San Francisco, Washington and to others,” said Walsh of the company’s money losing venture. “They all wanted something very different.”

By the early 1980s, the U.S.-owned rail car industry and its technology had either disappeared or been bought up by foreign companies. Bombardier builds the two-level Amtrak SuperLiners that are based on a design and technology purchased from Pullman when that firm left the rail car business.

U.S. transit agencies soon discovered that there were no domestic companies that could meet their requirements.

In 1979, San Diego transit authorities went shopping for existing electric-powered trolleys. But a domestic trolley had not been made since the late 1950s.

Instead, the Metropolitan Transit Development Board of San Diego turned to Siemens/DuWag of Germany. So far, the agency has purchased or ordered nearly 150 trolleys at about $1.5 million a car.

The U.S. also lacks much of the technology to build high-tech, high-speed trains.

All the proposals to build a high-speed rail network in Texas included trains that were based on either French or German technology, said Bob Neely, executive director of the Texas High Speed Rail Authority, the state agency charged with overseeing the construction of the privately financed system.

“There were no high-speed trains available in the United States,” said Neely. The winning French proposal is based on a train that now travels between Paris and the Atlantic coast at 185 m.p.h. to 200 m.p.h.

Although U.S.-owned passenger rail car makers passed from the scene, the industry has continued to operate--in factories owned by foreign firms. Bombardier builds rails and transit cars in factories in New York and Vermont, while Siemens/DuWag assembles trolleys for the San Diego and Sacramento transit systems in Sacramento.

The only American-owned maker of new passenger transit cars--Morrison-Knudsen of Boise, Idaho--entered the business only three years ago and won its first major contract from Chicago transit authorities in 1990.

Morrison-Knudsen also stands to benefit from the controversy surrounding the Metro Green Line in Los Angeles. After awarding the contract to build driverless trains to Sumitomo Corp. of America, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission canceled it this week under heavy political and public fire. The only other bidder was Morrison-Knudsen.

“We think it will be a very substantial growth market for at least the next decade,” said company spokesman Jeff Holley. The firm estimates that $3 billion to $5 billion of domestic passenger rail car contracts will be issued over the next three to five years.

Some say there is a chance that the domestic industry has been given a new, albeit tenuous, lease on life.

“I don’t think it’s too late to get back into the business if we are allowed to compete,” said Matthews at the Railway Progress Institute.

Nevertheless, a revived domestic industry will not be able to stand on its own as it once did, using American labor to build American passenger rail cars out of American-made parts.

Last week, Morrison-Knudsen won another major rail car contract from Chicago transit officials. The car frames and suspension will be made in Japan.