Freight traffic planning and rolling stock scheduling management tool

A railway organisation is designed to provide economies of scale in a country’s freight traffic system and it is on this understanding that a need has been observed to prompt a design for a Freight Traffic Planning and Rolling Stock Scheduling Management Tool that will ensure optimum allocation and utilisation of resources, and timely delivery of customer goods. Literature related to freight traffic planning and wagon scheduling is explored in an attempt to find the best solution alternatives in order to develop a programme for freight traffic planning and wagon scheduling that will optimise resource utilisation. However, several aspects have to be additionally taken into account, such as cyclic departures of the trains from stations, available loads at stations, types of wagons required for given commodity types, destinations, locomotive types, and transfer of wagons between or at stations i.e. attaching and or detaching wagons in transit. The model is formulated as a goal programming problem, and solutions are obtained using VB.Net on ORACLE Database. The solutions give proper knowledge of available business (freight traffic) at any station nationwide; knowledge and position of all wagons by types at anytime; proper allocation and scheduling of wagons to take available business in terms of priority and monitored wagon distribution nationwide. Locomotive and Wagon availability revolved around 74 and 66% respectively. Computational results for several test instances are presented

Optimization models of rail transportation under the financial crisis

This paper proposes an analysis of the most used models to optimize the rail transportation. Are presented a series of optimization models of labor efficiency in this sector, but also elements that gives the information on the competitiveness of this mode of transport.railway, railway optimization, optimization models for railway

The Short-term Car Flow Planning Model in Rail Freight Company – Case Study

AbstractWith the promotion of the environmentally friendly transportation modes (the European Commission supports the freight transport operations in the rail sector), an increase in the diversification of the demand is observed. While most rail freight companies tend to apply fixed schedules, this approach is not effective turns out to be ineffective due to the need to meet the customer's specific requirements.The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of empty wagon flow planning over a medium term horizon and to discuss the opportunities of improvement of this plans by discrete optimization. In order to increase the utilization and availability of wagons, the planning procedure with a rolling horizon has to be implemented. Unfortunately, since the plan has to be updated ca. every 4hours, this planning approach needs effective optimization tools. Our hybrid two-stage approach is designed to be implemented in such business environment. This formulation allows us to solve real life instances even for a 7-day time horizon

Analytical Models in Rail Transportation: An Annotated Bibliography

Not AvailableThis research has been supported, in part, by the U.S. Department of Transportation under contract DOT-TSC-1058, Transportation Advanced Research Program (TARP)

Mathematical Modeling for Demurrage Reduction in Coal Transportation for an Indian Thermal Power Plant

Competitive pressures on power plants have seen them attempting to reduce their operating expenses for profitable operations. In India, the plants use wagons of the Indian Railways to transport coal from the mines (in case of domestic coal) or from the ports (in case of imported coal). Once these loaded railway wagons have reached the power plant, they need to be unloaded and released within a stipulated time frame. If there is any delay beyond the stipulated time, the power plant has to pay penalty cost to the Indian Railways. In this paper, we describe an analysis of the underlying causes behind these delays. We use correlation analysis, queuing theory and simulation to mathematically model the coal arrival process in the company. The recommendation suggested by the study is currently under implementation.

The Development of the LEFT2 Model

Construction of the LEeds Freight Transport Model (LEFT) series was begun as part of the ITeLS project, although other funding has helped and will take forward its development. The initial version, now referred to by us as LEFT1, was a simple mode split model intended to give a rough idea of the magnitudes of the effects of various scenarios, possibly as a way of filtering which scenarios might be investigated using more detailed models. Besides being limited to mode split, LEFT1 suffered from a range of minor defects and deficiencies which led to its abandonment in favour of its successor, LEFT2. LEFT2 was constructed in 2004 as part of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council LINK FIT project, ITeLS, funded by the Department for Transport (DfT). We acknowledge here the help and useful comments from many persons associated with that project. Besides mode split effects, LEFT2 allows scenarios to alter the total size of the (road plus rail) market. Its purpose is to provide instantaneous ballpark estimates of road and rail freight tonne kilometres under various ‘scenarios’. At its base is a desire that the scenarios should not affect the sum of tonnes moved by both road and rail modes. This was because we felt that our scenarios should be viewed as having a neutral macroeconomic effect. For example, if taxes on lorry usage were increased, we would expect other taxes to be lower than otherwise (or government spending to increase) so that total demand in the economy would not change. Consumers might buy their goods from closer sources than hitherto, but they would not be expected to consume less in total. For example, if prices of some goods rose slightly due to higher road user charges, the consumer would have more to spend due to offsetting reduced income tax (or whatever) and much the same total quantity would be bought. Similarly, industrialists as a whole might find input prices increasing slightly, but will find they can charge slightly more for their outputs. In summary, LEFT2 provides an instantaneous estimate of the effect of macroeconomically neutral scenarios on mode split (road, trainload and wagonload), average length of haul and total market size. LEFT2 does not load the traffic onto vehicles, and so does not produce magnitudes of HGV vehicle kilometres, for instance. Consequently it does not produce estimates of emissions or other nuisances. It is hoped that a future version of LEFT can incorporate these elements and revisit the other matters that have had to be ‘parked’ for the present. LEFT2 gives a quick idea of the magnitudes of the effects of any policies that might be considered and should help to provide a first sift where many policies are being considered. This report describes the basic LEFT Methodology in Section 2. Emphasis is given to that methodology actually embodied in LEFT2, but there is also some discussion of rejected 4 methodologies, and some that have had to be held over for later versions of LEFT. Section 3 presents additional data that was needed by the LEFT2 model. Section 4 describes the scenarios chosen for testing in the ITeLS project, while section 5 gives the first results from using the LEFT2 model, for those scenarios

Time series analysis of rail freight services by the private sector in Europe

This paper explores rail freight services provided by the private sector in the context of a rail freight corridor through Europe with new EU policy directives in place and assesses the corridor using time series analysis. Comparisons between three different operational time periods are discussed; analysis suggests that these types of services operated on trans-European rail freight corridors appear to be a viable and reliable concept in the near future

Mitigating backdrop in operational efficiency : a case study

Abstract: The main focus of this investigation was to identify the backdrop in the operational efficiency of a rail company in South Africa - Transnet Freight Railways (TFR) and profer solutions. Qualitative approach was adopted through the administering of questionnaires to respondents in Transnet company. Even though Transnet makes effort to resolve the problems, the outcome of the results still show that the system of schedling is not consistent to a specifc standard and the turnaround time is still between poor and fair. In addition, wagon and locomotives failures is identified as one of the factors contributing to the backdrop in the operational efficiency of the TFR system. It is therefore recommended that adopting a good maintenenace system to the wagon and locomotive may help to reduce if not eliminate failures of the wagons and the locomotive. This will consequently help to improve the backdrop in the operational efficiency of the TFR system

Transportation demand analysis of coal from Hwange coal fields

This paper seeks to provide a background to the coal and coke manufacturing industry in Zimbabwe after the economical melt down of 2007. It analyses the current situation in terms of coal and coke supply and to identify the factors that affect coal and coke transportation choices. Results of the survey of the coal and coke suppliers were tabulated and factors which affect transportation such as method of loading, payment plans, reliability and strategic alignment of the transporter were analysed. Model recommendations on a strategic supply chain management approach were given for the agricultural sector and for the manufacturing sector with the aim of reducing heavy loads on the road and minimizing emissions by trucks while still maintaining high productivity.