Some of the most demanding asbestos removal work takes place on the railway. In early 2025, Innov8 UK Group carried out the licensed removal of asbestos insulating board (AIB) from a 1960s signalling relay room at Retford station in Nottinghamshire — a project that shows exactly why railway asbestos work needs a licensed specialist.
The relay room was a single-storey, brick-built trackside structure housing live railway signalling equipment, with an adjoining boiler and plant room. Decades of use had left AIB debris and contamination across the walls, floor and high-level ledges — more than 50 square metres in the main room alone — with further contamination in the plant room. An asbestos survey had scored the material as an urgent priority for removal.
Working on operational railway premises adds constraints that ordinary sites do not have: restricted access, the need to protect live equipment, and tightly controlled working windows. Every part of the job had to be planned around keeping the wider station safe and operational.
Innov8 UK Group removed the AIB under fully controlled conditions. A purpose-built enclosure was erected and held under negative pressure so that any airborne fibres were captured rather than escaping. The relay room and plant room were treated as separate enclosures and worked in sequence, with operatives decontaminating through a dedicated decontamination unit (DCU) on every exit.
Throughout the works, the material was kept wet to suppress fibre release, surfaces were shadow-vacuumed, and personal air monitoring confirmed operative exposure remained controlled. Only once an independent UKAS-accredited analyst had completed the four-stage clearance was the area certified safe.
Railway infrastructure across the country still contains significant quantities of asbestos in relay rooms, signal boxes, station buildings and depots. Removing it safely — without disrupting operations — is specialist work. Projects like Retford are the reason Innov8 UK Group has become a trusted licensed contractor for asbestos removal on the Network Rail estate.
