An accurate railway environmental noise prediction model is required to make the proper solution of the railway noise problems. In this paper, an engineering model for predicting the noise of conventional passenger cars is presented considering the acoustic source strength in octave-band frequencies and the propagation over grounds with varying surface properties. Since the formation of a train can be variable, the source strength of each locomotive and passenger car was estimated by measuring the pass-by noise and analysing the wheel-rail rolling noise. Some validation cases show on the average small differences between the predictions of the present model and the measurement results.