Railway

Stainless steel for railway

Reduce weight by up to 20% with high-strength stainless steel. Enhance safety with superior crash resistance. Make a sustainable choice for a long service life. Outokumpu offers a wide variety of stainless steel grades for passenger, freight, metro or light rail transit and metro systems.

Strong, lightweight and sustainable

Stainless steel is the ideal material to meet the growing global needs for effective and climate-friendly transport on rails. It enables durable but lightweight and cost-efficient railway vehicle designs, as well as lower life-cycle cost due to low maintenance needs. Made to last forever, stainless steel is also a highly sustainable material. A stainless steel frame will extend the lifetime of a train significantly: upgrades to technical components and interiors will be inevitable, but the frame itself will last decade after decade.

Applications

Passenger rail systems
Light rail systems
Metro systems
Freight vehicles

Performance

Lightweight and strong – reduce weight by up to 20% with an equivalent increase in freight capacity
Cost-effective – reduce material consumption with thinner structures, save in maintenance costs
Weldable & joinable – make ductile and crash-resistant high-performance welds
Corrosion resistant – ensure safety in transporting hazardous materials
Long service life – make your railway vehicles last decades
Sustainable – choose stainless steel from the global leader, with a carbon footprint 30% lower than the industry average

How to select materials for railway applications from an economic and social perspective

How do you make accurate price calculations for the whole life cycle of a train? What materials are optimal for making new trains safe and environmentally sustainable? See our webinar on-demand for valuable new insights.

Outokumpu’s Forta range includes the strongest stainless steels in our portfolio, including duplex, H-Series and temper rolled austenitic and ferritic stainless steels.

Duplex (austenitic-ferritic) stainless steel combines many of the best properties of austenitic and ferritic stainless steels: high strength, good corrosion resistance and enhanced resistance to stress corrosion cracking.

Our key Forta range grades for railway applications:
• Forta 301L/301LN (EN 1.4318)
• Forta LDX2101 (1.4162)
• Forta H400 (EN1.4376)
• Forta H500 (EN1.4678)
• Forta H800 (EN1.4678)
• Forta 4589 (EN1.4589)
• Supra 316Ti (EN 1.4571)
• Supra 316plus (EN 1.4420)
• Moda 410L (EN 1.4003)

Download Forta range datasheet