Keywords: sustainable railway infrastructure, decarbonisation, life cycle assessment, environmental product declarations, product category rules, embodied carbon.

This paper presents a systematic analysis of Environmental Product Declarations relevant to railway infrastructure with the objective of evaluating their suitability for supporting decarbonisation-oriented decision-making. A structured assessment of 89 declarations identified via the ECO Platform was conducted, examining product category coverage, programme operator representation, declaration type, geographical representativeness, applied product category rules, background databases, and declared life cycle modules. The results show that EPD availability is uneven across railway infrastructure components and strongly concentrated in concrete-based products, while several key components remain underrepresented. Significant methodological heterogeneity was observed, including variation in declaration types, applied PCRs, life cycle coverage, and background database versions, which limits comparability and constrains system-level application. Generic construction product PCRs dominate, whereas railway-specific PCRs are rarely applied, reducing the relevance of EPDs for infrastructure-specific decarbonisation strategies. Overall, the analysis demonstrates that current EPD practices primarily enable material-level transparency rather than comprehensive infrastructure-level carbon assessment. The findings highlight the need for expanded EPD coverage, greater adoption of railway-specific PCRs, and improved methodological harmonisation to strengthen the role of EPDs in railway infrastructure decarbonisation.

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