Train overtaking at railway stations within simulation models of railway lines

Abstract

Nowadays there are available simulation tools that can be used to simulate railway traffic but not that much attention has been paid to the quality and intelligence of some decision support systems used to resolve possible conflicts during simulation experiments. Objective of this work is to investigate more complex decision support system in the area of train overtaking within railway stations and to assess the level of benefits that this approach brings. The presented algorithm is valid in general conditions, but it is also validated in connection with simulation tool OpenTrack which is one of the leading simulation tools in the area of railway traffic simulations focused especially on railway lines. Possible solutions to this problem that are available in OpenTrack are considerably less sophisticated and their configuration is often not very intuitive. This topic is also discussed in greater detail in the paper. To show the advantages of this advanced decision-making approach, a case study that compares common and advanced decision-making approaches is presented.