Several technological developments are on the way to substantially impact future railway operations. Distributed traction power enables operating longer and heavier trains. The use of automatic couplings allows to quickly join formerly separately operated trains to longer units. Such a platooning on rails promises a much better utilization of congested rail corridors, but requires some upgrades of classical rail infrastructure as well. Rapid shunting tracks are necessary to form platoons and the railway lines have to be prepared to accommodate longer trains. This paper evaluates the rail platooning concept for German railway operator Deutsche Bahn and one of its most-frequented rail corridors. To do so, we formulate the rail platooning problem, which schedules the traversal of freight trains and their assignment to rail platoons along a rail corridor equipped with rapid-shunting facilities. To solve the resulting optimization problem, we apply a three-layered time-space network approach. Our solution procedure optimizing platoon building is benchmarked with conventional (non-platooned) solutions and our results show that considerably more trains can be channeled through a congested rail corridor.

一些技术发展正在对未来的铁路运营产生重大影响。分布式牵引力使列车更长或更重的运行成为可能。使用自动联轴器可以将以前单独运行的列车快速连接到更长的单元。在铁路上的这种排挡有望更好地利用拥挤的铁路走廊，但同时也需要对经典的铁路基础设施进行一些升级。快速的调车轨道对于形成排是必要的，并且必须准备铁路线以容纳更长的火车。本文评估了德国铁路运营商Deutsche Bahn及其最频繁的铁路走廊之一的铁路成排方案。为此，我们制定了铁路排的问题，它可以安排货运火车的穿越，并沿着配备有快速调车设施的铁路走廊将它们分配到铁路排。为了解决由此产生的优化问题，我们采用了三层时空网络方法。我们的解决方案程序优化排的建设以常规（非排）解决方案为基准，我们的结果表明，可以通过拥挤的铁路走廊引导更多的列车。