Locomotive Assignment Problem with Heterogeneous Vehicle Fleet and Hiring External Locomotives

Abstract

This paper focuses on solving the problem of how to assign locomotives to assembled trains optimally. To solve the problem, linear programming is applied. The situation we model in the paper occurs in the conditions of a transport operator that provides rail transport in the Czech Republic. In the paper, an extended locomotive assignment problem is modeled; the transport operator can use different classes of the locomotives to serve individual connections, some connections must be served by a predefined locomotive class, and the locomotives can be allocated to several depots at the beginning. The proposed model also takes into consideration the fact that some connections can be served by the locomotives of external transport companies or operators. The presented model is applied to a real example in order to test its functionality.

Behavioural Aspects of the Financial Decision-Making

“…Behavioural finance does not describe financial markets and market decision-making processes using mathematical models, but it is based on psychological observations and relies on the use of heuristics. Many assumptions of behavioural finance and most of the key concepts of the prospect theory are derived from experiments (Teichmann, 2015). There is usually no mathematical evidence for the results of these experiments, but many anomalies in the real financial markets can only be explained by behavioural finance findings.…”

An improved method of determining the schemes of locomotive circulation with regard to the technological peculiarities of railcar traffic

“…Given that the presented task is formulated as a coverage problem, which belongs to the NP-complete type, our optimization method of the problem solving involves a genetic algorithm, which is known to have been efficiently used in many studies [31,32]. It should be noted that there have been studies [16,19,33] devoted to solving the problem of scheduling locomotives' work at the operational level. Although the problem solved there differs from the one that is raised in the present study, it is similar in the complexity, and although the results are also different, examples are given of using methods for solving large-scale problems.…”

“…In [19], the research is devoted to solving the task of linking locomotives to trains in terms of how a transport operator performs rail transportation in the Czech Republic. In addition to planning the operation of specific locomotives, the developed mathematical model allows for the efficient use of some locomotive combinations of other companies.…”

Locomotive Schedule Optimization for Da-qin Heavy Haul Railway

“…Meanwhile, these researches of heavy haul locomotives are mainly for 10∼20 kt heavy-loaded trains. Relatively speaking, researches on the operational level are mainly about regular railways, which focus on the following areas: (1) Ji et al [9] used computer technologies to achieve double-locomotive traction control and determine locomotive marshalling schedules; (2) Ruppert et al [10] analyzed how to increase the usage efficiency and reliability of locomotives; (3) Kuo and Nicholls [11] developed a mixed integer linear program (MILP) to determine the least-cost plan of allocating locomotives and improve locomotive utilization; (4) Aronsson et al [12] built a mixed integer program (MIP) model to solve locomotive routing and scheduling problem and Vaidyanathan et al [13] formulated the locomotive routing problem (LRP) as an integer programming problem on a suitably constructed space-time network and developed robust optimization methods to solve it; (5) Ghoseiri and Ghannadpour [14], Kasalica et al [15], Rouillon et al [16], and Teichmann et al [17] were devoted to the research of locomotive assignment problem and used different methods to optimize it; and (6) Li et al [18] established a mathematical model for generating a locomotive working diagram of a train diagram with paired trains; then they used the improved ant colony algorithm to solve it. Most of the locomotive schedule studies are for regular trains, and only a few of them involve 10∼20 kt heavy-loaded trains.…”