Author(s)

C. MEIRICH AND N. NIEßEN

Abstract

This article describes how to maximize the number of freight trains through global networks. Nowadays, the capacity of railway lines and also of railway nodes can be calculated by using analytic algorithms. Currently there is no generally accepted method to allocate the overall capacity of lines and nodes of such networks by using analytic algorithms. However, to maximize the number of train runs, the rail passenger service will be fixed on the scheduled train course so that the rail freight service can use the remaining capacity on a planned or re-routed train course. Existing or detected bottlenecks could be eliminated by means of sensible re-routing due to optimization, which will reveal the best train paths through the network. The article concludes with an illustrative computation for a generic railway sub-network to exhibit how the optimization is working.

Keywords

assessment of railway infrastructure, linear programming, network optimization, railway capacity, routing