FORECASTING OF RAILWAY FREIGHT VOLUME: APPROACH OF ESTONIAN RAILWAY TO ARISE EFFICIENCY

Scheduling railway freight cars

It is dif®cult to allocate the freight cars and to determine how to load the several varieties of goods into them. In order to improve ef®ciency, a knowledge-based system (KBS) is developed and integrated into the existing railway information system. This paper introduces the development of the system and the framework in which the KBS are integrated into the existing system environments. Under...

Impact of High-Speed Passenger Trains on Freight Train Efficiency in Shared Railway Corridors

On the dynamics of European two–axle railway freight wagons

The design of European two–axle freight wagons can be traced back to the 1890’es. It has been and still is widely used in Europe because it is simple, rugged and cheap in price and maintenance. The internationally approved suspension for two–axle freight wagons in Europe is known as the UIC standard suspension (see Fig. 1). Each wagon has four of these suspensions. They consist of a leaf spring...

Comparison of the Economic Profitability of a Conventional Freight-Dedicated Railway Corridor and a Heavy Load Freight Corridor

By using mathematical models, this paper will compare the economic profitability of a heavy load freight corridor (30 t per axle) with a conventional freight-dedicated railway corridor (22.5 t per axle). This comparison concerns the construction and operation of a new, single-track of normal gauge, exclusively for freight traffic, and takes into account various demand values of freight volume (...

A comparison of North American and European railway systems Why Europe needs particular optimization models for railway freight traffic

Purpose In comparison to North America, railway companies in Europe are confronted with strong economic issues in running their wagonload traffic. The purpose of this paper is an analysis how infrastructural and institutional differences affect planning issues and economic efficiency. Method A particular decision problem from railway freight traffic, the Railroad Blocking Problem (RBP), is cons...