Rescheduling dense train traffic over complex station interlocking areas

Abstract

Railway rescheduling is the task of restoring feasibility in case of disturbances and limiting the propagation of delays through a railway network. This task becomes more difficult when dealing with complex interlocking areas, since operational rules constrain the passage of trains through short track sections. This paper presents a detailed microscopic representation of the railway network that is able to tackle the complexity of a station area with multiple conflicting routes and high service frequency. Two alternative graph formulations are presented to model the incompatibility between routes: one based on track sections and another based on the aggregation of track sections into station routes. An extensive computational study gives useful information on the performance of the two formulations for different disturbance scenarios. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.