Today’s Solutions: November 02, 2024

After 40 years of neglect, hundreds of abandoned trains in France are getting a new lease of life. That’s thanks to an initiative from railway company SNCF, which aims to recycle and reuse old trains to manufacture new ones.

The company has already kicked off the project in Rouen, in northern France, where 400 carriages covered in rust stretch over 10 km — a train graveyard that has been sitting there for more than four decades.

“For a long time, it was a site for long-term storage of locomotives,” the director of the center, Jérémie Pigeaud, tells euronews. “And so it could cause heartache for the railway workers to see these locomotives parked for a long time. But for the past four years, we’ve set up this whole dismantling process.”

The trains are getting repaired and recycled at a plant in Saint-Pierre-des-Corps. After removing hazardous materials such as asbestos, almost 90 percent of the train is recycled. The company then sends the recovered components — which include metal, wood, and glass pieces — to be reused in the construction of other trains.

The site in Rouen is just one out of 10 other train graveyards across the country, where SNCF has stored around 5,000 unused rail cars. The company has now ended that practice and is planning to find a new purpose for all of those trains by 2028.

Solutions News Source Print this article
More of Today's Solutions

This heartwarming Danish ad breaks down the ‘Us vs Them’ narrative

It’s rare that we publish a story about an advertisement, but then again it’s rare that an ad stirs so much emotion within its ...

Read More

NOAHs: Charlotte has a formula for long-lasting affordable housing

We recently shared how empty retail space could be the solution to California’s affordable housing crisis. Across the country in North Carolina, the city ...

Read More

A seat at the table for underrepresented communities

Climate change is already affecting all of us—however, those that bear the brunt of these consequences are predominantly from low-income, marginalized, BIPOC communities. So ...

Read More

Expanding democracy: Michigan opens new doors for formerly incarcerated voters

Malijah Gee's path from incarceration at the age of 17 to imminent freedom reflects the longing for a voice that has been suppressed for 36 years. ...

Read More