In a modern rail–rail transshipment yard huge gantry cranes transship containers between different freight trains, so that hub-and-spoke railway systems are enabled. In this context, we consider the transshipment yard scheduling problem (TYSP) where trains have to be assigned to bundles, which jointly enter and leave the yard. The objective is to minimize split moves and revisits. Split moves a...

The freight rail systems have an essential role to play in transporting the commodities between the delivery and collection points at different locations such as farms, factories and mills. The fright transport system uses a daily schedule of train runs to meet the needs of both the harvesters and the mills (An Integrated Approach to Optimise Cane Rail Operations (M. Masoud, E. Kozan, G. Kent, ...

The publication of this book could not have come at a more appropriate time. A convergence of factors, particularly related to globalization, congestion and energy prices, has propelled a renewed interest about the role of rail in the North American transport system, both for passengers and freight. Train Time seeks to address this ambitious task with an abundance of facts and clever observations.

Since the publication by Williamson (1968) of his seminal paper on antitrust there has been a growing recognition by regulators of the need to assess tradeoffs between merger-related efficiency gains and merger-induced increases in market power. This paper addresses that need by presenting a structural econometric model of recent mergers in the U.S. rail industry. The paper extends the structur...

Freight transport has undesirable effects on the environment. The most prominent of these is greenhouse gas emissions. Intermodal freight transport, where freight is shipped from origin to destination by a sequence of at least two transportation modes, offers the possibility of shifting freight (either partially or in full) from one mode to another in the hope of reducing the greenhouse emissio...

The privatisation of British Rail into twenty five train operating companies and three freight companies has highlighted the need for each company to have efficient operating schedules. Manpower costs are a significant element in any transport organisation, and the ability to minimise these costs is seen as crucial to the well running of these companies. In addition, the need to try out differe...

A number of economic, technical and political factors have limited the development of new, dedicated, very-high-speed rail systems in North America. Consequently, most, near-term development of improved or expanded passenger rail service in the U.S. will involve use of existing railroad infrastructure or rights of way. Comprehensive understanding of train accidents on shared-use corridors is cr...

Rail wheel squeal on curves in rail track is a source of potential noise annoyance to residents adjacent to rail lines. For one private rail freight operator, wheel squeal was causing repeated complaints from neighbours. Wheel squeal can be caused by the wheel-tyre to rail-top interaction and the wheel flange interaction with the gauge face of the rail (more like a screech). This paper describe...

Cars in rail freight service follow prescribed routes from their origin via intermediate shunting yards to their destination. The goal in designing such routes is to reduce the number of trains and their travel distances. Various real-world hard constraints make the problem difficult to formulate and also to solve. We present integer programming formulations for this car routing problem arising...