Vacuum solutions engineered for rail & transit
A maintenance-heavy industry where the dust comes from two places — friction and the past. Brake and wheel/rail wear generate a continuous metal-dust stream distinctive to rail, traction sand adds respirable silica, and refurbishing decades-old rolling stock liberates legacy lead-based coatings. The result is a mix of metal, toxic and respirable fractions that recovery has to handle together.
Friction & Legacy Aware
Wear dust and old coatings
Brake & Grinding Dust
Continuous metal wear
HEPA Filtration
Metal & fine fractions retained
Built for Rail Shops
Wheel shops to refurbishment
Explosion-Proof
Manufacturing specialists
1000+
Vacuums sold worldwide
USA
Designed & manufactured
Direct
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NFPA 660
ATEX / IECEx principles
Rail & Transit production process explorer
Every stage. Every challenge. The right vacuum solution.
Rail work spans building rolling stock and maintaining it for decades, with dust arising from machining, friction wear, and the refurbishment of old equipment. Walk the stages where recovery matters.
Stage 01 — Wheel & axle machining
Turning and machining wheels and axles produces steel fines — combustible as a fine fraction and captured at the wheel shop with rated recovery.
Key challenges
Friction dust and dust from the past
Brake & Wear Dust
Brake and wheel/rail wear generate continuous metal dust — a friction-born stream distinctive to rail maintenance, captured HEPA-retained.
Legacy Coatings
Refurbishing decades-old rolling stock liberates legacy lead-based coating dust, demanding sealed, HEPA-retained handling.
Traction Sand Is Silica
Locomotive traction sand is silica-bearing, so handling and spillage add a respirable-silica hazard alongside the metal dust.
Wheel-Shop Grinding
Wheel and axle machining and grinding produce metal fines that are combustible as a fine fraction — grounded, rated recovery.
Metal + Toxic + Respirable
Rail dust mixes metal wear, legacy lead and silica, so recovery is specified to handle the whole mix rather than one component.
Maintenance-Heavy
Rail is maintenance-intensive, so recovery is deployed across shops, pits and refurbishment bays throughout the operation.
Dust & materials knowledge center
What rail work generates
Combustibility and severity are material- and particle-size-specific — testing and your Dust Hazard Analysis govern. Full directory: the full materials directory.
Applications in rail & transit
- Factory housekeeping
- Machine cleaning
- Production line cleaning
- Preventive maintenance
- Shutdown cleaning
- Dust recovery
- Powder recovery
- Spill cleanup
- Silo cleaning
- View all
Built for performance. Built for compliance.
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HEPA Vacuums
99.99% filtration for fine and hazardous dust
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Industrial Vacuums
Continuous-duty recovery for demanding plants
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Explosion Proof Vacuums
Grounded, bonded recovery for combustible dust
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Central Vacuum Systems
Facility-wide housekeeping from fixed drops
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Representative case study
Reducing Aluminum Dust Hazards in an Automotive
How a representative North American automotive manufacturer brought combustible aluminum fines under control with grounded, air-operated explosion-proof vacuum recovery and immersion separation.
Read the full case studyTalk to the manufacturer
Get the right explosion proof vacuum for your application.
Tell us what you need to vacuum and where. Our technical team will recommend the PrestiVac model best suited to your material, your classification and how hard you will work it — and because we build every unit ourselves, we can modify it to fit.
- Legally certified explosion proof
- Solid stainless steel construction
- Industry-best 3-year warranty
- Designed & manufactured in the USA
- 200+ vacuum versions