Assumptions for the mathematical model investigating the effect of railway line route parameters on the average speed of railway vehicles

Abstract

Rail transport is the most efficient alternative to road transport. The popularity of this branch is constantly growing. As a consequence, it is noticed that key terminals, railway routes and HUB stations are constantly being overloaded, resulting in a reduction in the available capacity. This necessitates the passage of higher priority trains (mainly passenger trains), which requires the introduction of additional stops for freight trains and consequently reduces commercial speeds. A railway line is characterized, m.in, by parameters such as: electrification, maximum speed, railway line class, track width, etc. Each of these parameters can have an impact on the average speed of rail vehicles in rail transport. An additional factor determining speed is the capacity of railway lines. Due to the lower capacity and the consequent low average commercial speed, alternative routes for trains are being sought. The aim of the article is to analyze the assumptions for the mathematical model of the influence of technical parameters of routes and capacity of railway lines on the average speed of rail vehicles. In order to achieve this goal, the article is divided into five sections. The first section is an introduction to the article. The second section describes theoretical issues related to modelling in transport. The third section describes the issues of mathematical modeling using graph theory. The practical application of graph theory on the selected example is described in the fourth section. A summary of the article and preliminary research is presented in the last section.