Several phenomena are included in the environmental problems along the wayside of railways; railway noise, ground vibration, micro-pressure wave radiating from tunnel portals, pressure variation due to train passage, oils and heavy metals scattered from running trains and others. It is necessary to mitigate each phenomenon to realize environment-friendly railways to cope with speed-up and frequency-up. This paper describes recent trends of research and development at Railway Technical Research Institute on the environmental problems along the wayside of railways.

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