Aluminium consumption in Russia to increase due to development of Railway transportation

“Manufacture of passenger and freight railway cars of aluminium semis may considerably increase aluminium consumption in Russia”, said Jürg Zehnder, Cideon (Germany) at a meeting with Russian manufacturers of railway cars which was held on June 2, 2010. According to him, already in 1960s professionals in Western Europe arrived at an opinion that aluminium railway cars may become as profitable in operation as steel ones. Although in the beginning they faced a resistance of some machine-building companies which considered the idea of aluminium railway a waste of time. Today the majority of railway cars in Europe and the USA are made of aluminium semis. For example, aluminium freight cars are used to carry coals, ores, fertilizers and cement.
Jürg Zehnder noted that a wide use of aluminium semis in transportation machine-building is caused by a number of reasons including their lightweight as compared to steel, better corrosion resistance under the condition of drops of temperatures, a higher strength etc. Due to these properties aluminium cars are lighter as compared to steel ones, and have a higher, up to 50 years service life.
There have been a few attempts to make aluminium railway cars in Russia however, all of they ended up with experimental samples. Since railway cars manufacturers show keen interest in the subject producers believe that due to economical reasons aluminium will be widely used on Russian railways in the nearest future.