Page 392 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 6

Watson, Inara. Amer, Ali. Bayyati, Ali.

The percentages of resources that are used to produce a typical train car are depicted in Figure

Figure 2.2. On average, the production of a single train vehicle requires more metal and less
plastics than that used to produce a road car. In most countries, recently designed trains have
around 40 years of service life and this long life supports the resource efficiency. In order to
ensure that railway transport is fully competitive it is important to consider at all stages of
the life cycle of the railway transport from the design and building stages to the operation and
maintenance and eventually the disposal.
At the design stage of a new rolling stock, there is a need to minimise the amount of genera-
ted waste and to avoid potentially hazardous materials such as asbestos-containing materials
or substances that may contribute to the damage of the Ozone layer and accelerate climate
change. For example, at the production stage, there is a need to re-use parts and components
of the rolling stock whilst at the disposal stage of the rolling stock there is a need to recycle
the greatest possible amount of used materials. Bombardier’s vision is to achieve 100% product
recyclability and to use 100% recycled materials. At the current time, Bombardier has an avera-
ge recovery rate for all manufactured rolling stock of 95%. The French high speed train AGV has
98% recyclability (Jehanno, et.al.,2011c). The proper disposal of the end-of-life rolling stock
and components of railway infrastructure can reduce the negative impact on the environment.
When comparing the number of vehicles and carriages needed to be disposed, the amount of
carriages is not sufficient compared to the number of vehicles, but waste generated by one
carriage is greater than waste generated by one vehicle. It was found that disposal of one frei-
ght carriage generated is the same amount of waste as 16-20 passenger road cars. The waste
of the disposal of one railway passenger carriage is equivalent to the waste of disposing 48-57
road passenger cars whilst the disposal of 3-part electric multiple unit will generate waste of
126-156 road passenger cars.
Some rail carriages are easier to recycle than others, for example, freight rail carriages are
easy to recycle, as 60 to 80% of their mass is steel and cast iron and it is known that metals
have the highest recyclability rate (www.unife.org, 2013a). Passenger rail carriages, particu-
larly electric multiple units are more difficult and labour intensive to recycle. At the present
time, there is a lack of technology for recycling polymer and plastics, but it is easy and cheap to
produce them. Different types of plastics have different chemical components and this makes
it difficult to dispose them.
The disposal of rolling stock is similar to the disposal of road cars, and this includes the fo-
llowing stages; send the vehicle to a recycling site, pre-treatment, dismantling, shredding and
treatments of recovered materials and parts. Newport in the UK has the largest shredder in the
world and can shred 450 cars per hour (www.weg.net.,2009). One of the most difficult issues of
recycling of rolling stock is getting a rail carriage to the recycling site, as many of them in their
current condition are not suitable for transportation on the main line. The scrap value of a ca-
rriages is around £11,500 but to get it to a recycling site will cost approximately £5,000 (www.
unife.org., 2013b). There is little economic benefit for the railway industry to encourage it to
recycle the rolling stock. For this particular reason, there is need for governments to support
the railway industry in recycling the rolling stock and parts of railway infrastructure. Suitability
for recycling or recovering is measured through Material Recovery Factor and Energy Recovery
Factor. Material Recovery Factor represents the availability of recycling and inefficiency of the
recycling processes. Energy Recovery Factor represents the suitability of the material concer-
ned to be recovered as energy. Values of Energy Recovery Factor and Material Recovery Factor
need always to consider the concept of valuating the efficiency of recycling. If materials do not
have recyclability or energy recovery potential then these factors will be equal to zero (www.
unife.org., 2013c).

Recycling needs to be considered in the design stage, in order to be able to make dismantling

390 360.revista de alta velocidad