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The usual brake on a train that can't do regenerative breaking is a big grid of resistors to dump the energy as heat.

It's much less wear and tear than friction brakes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_braking

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And diesel hydraulic trains (and some buses) usually use these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retarder_(mechanical_engineeri...
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I believe at least subways tend to have lousy air:

https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/subway-air-pollution-dispro...

But I expect it's much better in open-air rail systems.

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I was thinking open-air yes, tunnels do indeed have major issue. With pollutant concentrations, road tunnels are the same (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13619...).

For all that I did not care for them originally this is probably something full-height platform screen doors help with, assuming the trains themselves are also filtered that would keep the pollutants clear of drivers and users, although it does not exactly resolve the question of managing their presence in the tunnels themselves (and track / tunnel maintenance personnel should probably already be wearing respirators if not full breathing apparatus), and I could see things get pretty dire in case of breakdowns.

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Impossible to retrofit, of course, but what helps more are big tunnels. Modern ~9m diameter single tunnel systems are a lot better for this than old 3.5m diameter double tunnel systems.
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