Proceedings of the American Electric Railway Transportation and Traffic Association.

"Containing a complete report of the ... annual convention."

American railway transportation /

Includes bibliographies.

American railway transportation,

"References for further reading" at end of some chapters.

The conflict resolution in connected railway junctions

Purpose of study: Traffic conflicts occur when trains on different routes approach a converging junction in a railway network at the same time. To prevent collisions, a right-of-way assignment is needed to control the order in which the trains should pass the junction. Such control action inevitably requires the braking and/or stopping of trains, which lengthens their travelling times and leads to delays. Train delays cause a loss of punctuality and hence directly affect the quality of service. It is therefore important to minimise the delays by devising a suitable right-of-way assignment. One of the major difficulties in attaining the optimal right-of-way assignment is that the number of feasible assignments increases dramatically with the number of trains. Connected-junctions further complicate the problem. Exhaustive search for the optimal solution is time-consuming and infeasible for area control (multi-junction). Even with the more intelligent deterministic optimisation method revealed in [1], the computation demand is still considerable, which hinders real-time control. In practice, as suggested in [2], the optimality may be traded off by shorter computation time, and heuristic searches provide alternatives for this optimisation problem.

Evaluation on service quality of railway timetable

From the business viewpoint, the railway timetable is a list of the products presented by the railway transportation operators to the customers, specifying the schedules of all the train services on a railway line or network. In order to evaluate the quality of the train service schedules, a number of indices are proposed in this paper. These indices primarily take the passengers’ needs, such as waiting time, transfer time and transport capacity into consideration. Delay rate is usually used in post-evaluation. In this study, we propose to give an evaluation on the probability that the scheduled train services are likely to be delayed and the recovery ability of the timetable after delay has occurred. The evaluation identifies the possible problems in the services, such as excessive waiting time, non-seamless transfer, and high possibility of delay. This paper also discusses the improvement of these problems through certain adjustments on the timetable. The indices for evaluation and the adjustment method on timetable are then applied to a case study on the Hu-Ning-Hang railway in China, followed by the discussions of the merits of the proposed indices for timetable evaluation and possible improvement.

Train control to reduce delays upon service disturbances at railway junctions

Train delay is one of the most important indexes to evaluate the service quality of the railway. Because of the interactions of movement among trains, a delayed train may conflict with trains scheduled on other lines at junction area. Train that loses conflict may be forced to stop or slow down because of restrictive signals, which consequently leads to the loss of run-time and probably enlarges more delays. This paper proposes a time-saving train control method to recover delays as soon as possible. In the proposed method, golden section search is adopted to identify the optimal train speed at the expected time of restrictive signal aspect upgrades, which enables the train to depart from the conflicting area as soon as possible. A heuristic method is then developed to attain the advisory train speed profile assisting drivers in train control. Simulation study indicates that the proposed method enables the train to recover delays as soon as possible in case of disturbances at railway junctions, in comparison with the traditional maximum traction strategy and the green wave strategy.

Feasibility of open markets for mainline railways in China

For decades, the development, construction, track ownership and operation of mainline railways in China have been overseen by the state-owned authorities. From mid-90’s, the mainline railway management has undergone revamps to revitalize the intra-modal competitiveness of railway transportation and to steer it toward the direction of modern business management. With the rapid economic growth; the large-scale expansion of the mainline network; and the increasing expectation on service, the mainline railways in China require further restructuring. Inevitably, a sustainable approach to ensure business viability and service quality in the next few decades is an imminent challenge. This paper reviews the operations and management of mainline railway in China and discusses the possibility of introducing open access market. Drawing the experiences on railway open markets outside China, the discussions include the need and feasibility of railway open market in China; and the suitability and limitations of different models. Particular considerations will be given to the unique characteristics of the mainline railways in China, where the developments across neighbouring regions are unbalanced; freight and passenger services are of similar demands; and the high-speed train operations are operated with low-speed ones in mixed traffic.

A Heuristic algorithm for fixed train runtime

This paper proposes a train movement model with fixed runtime that can be employed to find feasible control strategies for a single train along an inter-city railway line. The objective of the model is to minimize arrival delays at each station along railway lines. However, train movement is a typical nonlinear problem for complex running environments and different requirements. A heuristic algorithm is developed to solve the problem in this paper and the simulation results show that the train could overcome the disturbance from train delay and coordinates the operation strategies to sure punctual arrival of trains at the destination. The developed algorithm can also be used to evaluate the running reliability of trains in scheduled timetables.

Modeling circulation of train-set with multiple routing

Planning on utilization of train-set is one of the key tasks of transport organization for passenger dedicated railway in China. It also has strong relationships with timetable scheduling and operation plans at a station. To execute such a task in a railway hub pooling multiple railway lines, the characteristics of multiple routing for train-set is discussed in term of semicircle of train-sets' turnover. In programming the described problem, the minimum dwell time is selected as the objectives with special derive constraints of the train-set's dispatch, the connecting conditions, the principle of uniqueness for train-sets, and the first plus for connection in the same direction based on time tolerance σ. A compact connection algorithm based on time tolerance is then designed. The feasibility of the model and the algorithm is proved by the case study. The result indicates that the circulation model and algorithm about multiple routing can deal with the connections between the train-sets of multiple directions, and reduce the train's pulling in or leaving impact on the station's throat.

Simulation model for driving dynamics, energy use and power supply

Dissertação para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica Ramo de Energia

Aplicação de Data Mining à Segurança do Trabalho Ferroviário

Embora o objectivo de redução de acidentes laborais seja frequentemente invocado para justificar uma aplicação preventiva de testes de álcool e drogas no trabalho, há poucas evidências estatisticamente relevantes das pressupostas causalidade e correlação negativa entre a sujeição aos testes e os posteriores acidentes. Os dados de testes e dos acidentes ocorridos com os colaboradores de uma transportadora ferroviária portuguesa de âmbito nacional, durante anos recentes, começam agora a ser explorados, em busca de relações entre estas e outras variáveis biográficas. - Although the aim of reducing occupational accidents is frequently cited to justify preventive drug and alcohol testing at work, there is little statistically significant evidence of the assumed causality and negative correlation between exposure to testing and subsequent accidents. Data mining of tests and accidents involving employees of a Portuguese national wide railway transportation company, during recent years, is now beginning in search of relations between these and other biographical variables.

Dos caminhos de água aos caminhos de ferro: a construção da hegemonia de Natal através das vias de transporte (1820-1920)

At a time of changes on the territory during the 19th century, the political and socioeconomic elites of the province and later State of Rio Grande do Norte evolved a discourse in order to justify the permanence of Natal as a city holding a status of capital. In this work we analyze the means employed by the ruling classes to impose their wish to raise Natal to an outstanding position among the existing cities by intervening on the territory during a period of one hundred years (1820-1920). During that time, which was characterized by changing commercial flows and technological development, the elites interventions were essentially directed to the implementation of modes of transportation, especially the railway. We try to understand the reinforcement of Natal as a capital city not only in political and administrative terms, but mainly in a commercial and symbolic manner, through the discourse and interventions undertaken by the local administrative elites, who stimulated the creation of a set of relations on the territory that also imprinted visible marks in the capital s urban fabric. These interventions were based upon the establishment of an infrastructure for exporting the State s production, firstly through and despite the Potengi River, and later on by the construction of railways. Although the project of Natal s hegemony had been outlined before the establishment of the railway network, in both cases the ultimate objective was to reinforce and develop the capital city as a commercial urban center to the detriment of other cities

Flutuação do lençol freático e sua implicação na recuperação de hidrocarbonetos: um estudo de caso

Pós-graduação em Geociências e Meio Ambiente - IGCE

Influência do uso de trens de caixa móvel na implantação e operação de novas ferrovias.

O presente trabalho tem por objetivo primário abordar os atuais conhecimentos sobre o transporte ferroviário interurbano e regional de passageiros, com foco na tecnologia dos trens de caixa móvel, também conhecidos como trens pendulares. Como objetivo secundário busca-se analisar a influência dos trens de caixa móvel ou pendulares na implantação e operação de novas ferrovias, com ênfase na adequação em fase de projeto, mostrando-se o potencial dessa tecnologia para o aumento da velocidade média e a redução dos tempos de viagem. São tratados os tópicos relevantes para o transporte ferroviário de passageiros, como o conforto do usuário, as especificações técnicas do material rodante e referências dos custos de implantação e operação envolvidos, mostrando-se também dentro de cada aspecto as diferenças dos trens pendulares em relação aos trens convencionais. Três estudos de caso elaborados terão como objetivo explicitar as interveniências da operação dos trens pendulares com o projeto ferroviário, em especial com o projeto geométrico, e através de simulações de marcha e comparações, mostrar de maneira prática o potencial do uso dos trens pendulares. Através do embasamento teórico e dos estudos de caso, é feita uma análise crítica de modo a possibilitar tanto um entendimento do transporte ferroviário de passageiros, quanto do material rodante de caixa móvel e suas possibilidades. Os resultados dos estudos de caso e a análise crítica mostram uma redução significativa dos tempos de viagem, entre 8,1 e 20,0%, mediante a operação de trens pendulares em substituição ao material rodante convencional.

Report of the Committee on the Movement of the Vehicle /

"To be presented before the American Electric Railway Transportation and Traffic Association convention held at San Francisco, Cal., June 23 to 26, 1930."