Glass for train stations: safety and durability requirements

Specifying train station glass means considering factors like safety, strength and regulatory requirements. Get to grips with the basics.



What is glass for? In train stations, it's not just about sight lines. It's also about safety.

It's not difficult to see why. In 2024 and 2025, the Office of Rail and Road reports, there were 1,730 million passenger journeys on the National Rail network. That's 1,730 million accidents waiting to happen.

This means glass in train stations needs to be both safe and durable. The glass itself needs to be able to withstand collisions and other high impacts. It must maintain structural integrity. Often, it must be fire-resistant, too.

In most cases, this means safety glass. For those who don't know, safety glass is a category of glass products that includes toughened glass and laminated glass.

Both types of glass are built for safety and durability – around five times and six times stronger than standard annealed glass, respectively. The main difference between them is the way they break.

How toughened and laminated glass break

Toughened glass is made by heating standard glass in a furnace at an extremely high temperature. It's then removed from the furnace and rapidly cooled.

This heating and cooling process puts the outer surface into compression and the interior into tension. The compressed serve makes the glass much stronger because cracks have difficulty forming and spreading. If it does break, the stored internal stresses cause it to shatter into many small, less dangerous pieces instead of sharp shards.

Laminated glass, by contrast, doesn't shatter at all. Made from two sheets of glass and a plastic interlayer (often but not always PVB), it retains its structural integrity when broken.

Both toughened and laminated glass are used in train stations precisely because they break safely. In the event of an accident, the glass either breaks in a way that's unlikely to injure a passenger (toughened glass) or stays in its frame (laminated glass).

Another reason these two types of safety glass are used in train stations is that they can be fire-rated. This is when the glass is specially treated to slow down the spread of smoke and fire. The result: passengers and staff have more time to evacuate and the emergency services have more time to arrive.

What safety standards govern glass for use in train stations?

In some situations, safety glass is optional. But in train stations, like many other public spaces, the use of safety glass is mandated by building regulations.

Toughened or laminated safety glass has to be used in so-called "critical locations". These include doors, low-level windows and side panels.

In train stations, safety glass is mandatory for all glazed areas below 800 mm from floor level, within 300 mm of doors and in doors themselves.

For frameless or partly framed glass balustrades (and other applications), the glass needs to be a minimum of six millimetres thick.

Whatever the application, glass needs to be visibly stamped with the relevant British or European standard markings. This is to ensure compliance. Non-compliance can lead to a fine.

Toughened glass must comply with BS EN 12150 and laminated glass must comply with BS EN 14449. This is to ensure adequate impact resistance in crowded, fast-paced environments.

Learn more about safety glass regulations and critical locations.

Where is glass used in train stations?

Glass is used in many applications in train stations. These include:

• Platform edge doors and screens
• Balustrades and barriers
• Roofs and skylights
• Windows and doors
• Facades
• Passenger waiting shelters
• CCTV housing
• Information display screens and ticket machines
  
  

As well as these functional uses, glass is often used as an architectural feature. Glasgow Queen Street, for instance, has a huge glass facade, while Birmingham New Street is constructed around a vast glass-and-steel atrium.

These diverse uses are a testament to the versatility of safety glass. These days, no distinction is visible between functional glass and decorative glass. A beautiful glass mural or structural feature like a staircase can be just as sturdy as a functional glass barrier.

Safety glass can be decorated in a variety of ways. You can explore these effects by browsing our decorative glass products. It's not for nothing that we were chosen to supply glass for Heathrow Airport Terminal 2.

Case study: central London's Elizabeth line stations

Covering 73 km, London's Elizabeth line (formerly Crossrail) carries over 200 million passengers a year. That's about one seventh of all trips by rail in the UK.

As in all UK stations, safety is an essential, not an add-on. For this reason, Brit Glass reports, "Almost four kilometres of glazed platform edge screening [was] installed across central London's Elizabeth line stations, keeping passengers safe with the final segment of the landmark rail project now open."

These glazed barriers have been installed on eastbound and westbound platforms at Paddington, Bond Street, Woolwich, Canary Wharf, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street and Whitechapel.

The glazing itself consists of "two pieces of advanced toughened glass". This makes it compliant with current "barrier safety" and "blast resistance" risk requirements.

The glass was supplied by Pilkington UK to Knorr-Bremse Rail Systems UK. They manufactured and installed the platform edge glazing.

How is glass durability measured?

There are several different ways to measure glass durability. Glass can be tested through mechanical strength testing. This involves measuring the impact of glass through mechanical bending.

Other methods include pendulum impact testing, four-point bending and measuring material degradation over time.

The durability of safety glass is primarily measured through impact resistance tests. This involves dropping a 50 kg weight from a pendulum mechanism onto an 876 mm x 1,938 mm pane of glass. The weight is dropped from different heights to measure the level of impact resistance.

The safety glass is then categorised into classes one through three. The classification depends on the height from which the glass can withstand impact without breaking.

Are you looking for high-quality toughened or laminated glass for installation in a train station? Get in touch with ToughGlaze today for a quick, competitive quote or explore our range of glass processing services online.