A railway interlocking system (RIS) plays a vital role in the safe transportation of a railway system. It is responsible for the safe routes of trains making sure that each train movement follows the other in a proper and safe sequence. Detailed verifications and evaluations are mandatory before deploying an RIS, since it is a safety critical system (SCS). But the increasing complexity of the R...

doi:10.1017/S1049023X12000544 As traffic accidents occupy center stage in injury discussions, Forsberg and colleagues’ report ‘‘One hundred years of railway disasters and recent trends’’ made interesting reading. With trains traveling at higher and higher speeds, the authors correctly recommend injury prevention and safety mechanisms to decrease the risk of mass-casualty events. The robust Emer...

Since its early days the development of railway systems has been an important driving force for technological progress. From the 1840s onward a dense railroad network was spread all over the world. Within a few decades railway became the predominant traffic system carrying a steadily increasing volume of goods and number of passengers. This rapid development was accompanied by substantial devel...

In this paper we describe the use of a set covering model with additional constraints for scheduling train drivers and conductors for the Dutch railway operator NS Reizigers. The schedules were generated according to new rules originating from the project “Destination: Customer” (“Bestemming: Klant” in Dutch). This project is carried out by NS Reizigers in order to increase the quality and the ...

Transportation of the power transformers from site production to exploitation is very complex and sensible task. During transportation, transformer can be subjected a variety different impacts registered either during railway transportation or on/off loading. The should designed sustain high accelerations appearing often transportation. Transformer are usually equipped with impact recorder regi...

The Noise Related Annoyance Cognition and Health (NORAH) research initiative is one of the most extensive studies on the physiological and psychological long-term effects of transportation noise in Europe. It includes research on the quality of life and annoyance as well as cardiovascular effects, sleep disturbance, breast cancer, blood pressure, depression and the cognitive development of chil...