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Engineering giant Siemens said that its US light-rail manufacturing subsidiary is enjoying boom times -- selling a vehicle designed to withstand collisions with cars. Houston's Metro Rail is just one of many light rail systems being introduced across the US. For engineer Oliver Hauck, manufacturing rail vehicles is more than ordinary industrial production. In fact Hauck proudly calls it a "real craft."

Hauck knows what he's talking about. He runs German engineering giant Siemens' streetcar manufacturing plant in Sacramento. But when the German company showed up in the California capital more than two years ago with its plans to build trams there, it found little evidence of craft or even skill. Hauck couldn't find a single welder with the right skills for the job anywhere in the region.

Making meter-long welds across thin sheet metal without the car "bending like a banana," says Hauck, takes talent and sensitivity. More important, it takes good training. To provide that training, Siemens flew 50 welders from its Munich locomotive plant to California, where they spent six months retraining local welders. Now the Sacramento plant is up and running.

In fact, it's operating at full speed ahead. Streetcar and light rail production is one of the few booming industries in the crisis-plagued United States. Siemens is the market leader and is seeing a rapid increase in orders, with firm commitments for more than 200 trains currently on its books. When the company completes its new assembly building in about two years, it will be able to almost double its current production volume of 72 trains a year. When that happens, Hauck expects the high demand for Siemens' light rail vehicles to continue indefinitely.

The United States, traditionally a nation of cars, faces international criticism for its high levels of gasoline consumption. But chronic road congestion is also becoming an economic problem. According to the Texas Transportation Institute, traffic congestion costs the economy $78 billion a year in the form of lost working hours and wasted fuel.

As a result, light rail systems are becoming an attractive option, even in the auto lobby's traditional strongholds. Texas oil center Houston, for example, opened its first, modest light rail line, Metrorail, four years ago -- although the single six mile line, with its 18 trains, was somewhat reminiscent of a small collection of toy trains. Meanwhile, the city is expanding the network to include 31 miles of track, and has ordered another 100 trains. Market leader Siemens' product line consists of only two models. The newer model, with a lattice frame and a plastic body, is similar to modern European streetcar designs. But the classic model is a quaint tram with a steel body, based on a decades-old vehicle originally produced by Duewag, a company Siemens acquired in 1989.

Because of its excellent crash statistics, the boxy vehicle is especially popular in places where collisions with other vehicles are more likely, Hauck explains. In a country in which many cars are designed to be exceptionally thick-skinned, robustness is one of the most important attributes of light rail construction.

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