Production of locomotive rosters for a multi-class multi-locomotive problem

The locomotive assignment problem: a survey on optimization models

“…Noble et al. () study a locomotive scheduling problem faced by the Australian State of Victoria's Public Transport Corporation (PTC). PTC has to decide which locomotives to allocate to a set of long‐trip train services so that the total power allocated results greater than the load to be pulled, and the overall cost is minimized.…”

“…Usually, to pull a passenger train, no more than two locomotives of the same type are needed when a single locomotive is not sufficient. According to Noble et al (2001), when a single locomotive is sufficient, the problem is modeled assuming several classes of locomotives and a single pulling locomotive (multiclass single-locomotive problem), otherwise the train is pulled by a multilocomotive consist (multiclass multilocomotive problem). In both cases, the reduced size of passenger trains and consists make the problem more tractable with respect to the freight version.…”

“…Railway company Ramani (1981) Indian Railways Cordeau et al (2000) VIA Rail Canada Cordeau et al (2001) VIA Rail Canada Lingaya et al (2002) VIA Rail Canada Illés et al (2005) MagyarÁllamvasutak Illés et al (2006) MagyarÁllamvasutak Paoletti and Cappelletti (2007) Trenitalia Table 4 Publications in freight trains locomotive management Authors Railway company Florian et al (1976) Canadian National Ziarati et al (1997) Canadian National Ziarati et al (1999) Canadian National Ziarati et al (2005) Canadian National Ireland et al (2004) Canadian Pacific Railway Ahuja et al (2005a) CSX Transportation Ahuja et al (2005b) CSX Transportation Ahuja et al (2006) CSX Transportation Vaidyanathan et al (2008a) CSX Transportation Vaidyanathan et al (2008b) CSX Transportation Norfolk Southern Brannlund et al (1998) Banverket Swedish National Railway Scholz (2000) Stateiis Järiivägar Swedish State Railways Noble et al (2001) Public Transport Corporation Baceler and Garcia (2006) Companhia Vale do Rio Doce Fügenschuh et al (2006) Deutsche Bahn AG Fügenschuh et al (2008) Deutsche Bahn AG A large number of papers focus on the more complex freight railway locomotive assignment. Tables 3 and 4 report a list of the publications inspired by real LAP applications in passenger and freight train services.…”

“…Scholz's solver also has to choose the route that a locomotive could take to get from a trip start location to its end location taking into account the time needed for a possible passive transfer and avoiding collisions in single-laned tracks. Noble et al (2001) study a locomotive scheduling problem faced by the Australian State of Victoria's Public Transport Corporation (PTC). PTC has to decide which locomotives to allocate to a set of long-trip train services so that the total power allocated results greater than the load to be pulled, and the overall cost is minimized.…”

“…The problem is simplified by the fact that, since trips are long and repetitive, once a locomotive is assigned to a service it remains with that service. Noble et al (2001) initially proposed a straightforward pure integer program formulation of the problem. As optimality was impossible to achieve, the authors change the model reformulating the constraints and replacing every integer variable with a linear sum of a special ordered minimal covering set of binary variables.…”