End of the line: the Chalindrey dismantling facility
After clocking up millions of kilometres, our decommissioned Corail trains make their final journey to Chalindrey, in northeastern France, to a brand-new, dedicated dismantling facility.
A bright red, 6,000-sq-m building
Inaugurated in 2020, the vast red building housing the Chalindrey facility is a pop of colour in the surrounding countryside. This legacy SNCF site marks the end of the line for old Corail trains. Here railcars are dismantled, decontaminated (their asbestos content is removed), and as many components as possible are reclaimed and recycled. Although the facility belongs to DI Environnement, it is of key importance to SNCF.
The Chalindrey facility boasts
6,000 sq m
of floor space for dismantling
In all,
95%
of train components are reclaimed
It aims to dismantle
1,300
coaches by 2030
A one-of-a-kind robot
At Chalindrey, end-of-life Corail trains are dismantled in several stages. First, coaches are stripped out (non-ACM1 materials are removed) in a pre-decontamination zone. They are then sent through the depressurized zone for decontamination, notably the asbestos2 abatement cabin, where two robots remove asbestos from train bodies using abrasive blasting at 800km an hour. Special software creates a model of each Corail coach, then programmes the robots’ movements. Iron and other metal railcar components are then dismantled and sold to the steel industry, with all remaining waste sent to a specialized landfill facility.