FORMALISING A RAIL PLANNING TASK FOR A MINING COMPANY

Abstract

The formalisation of the task of railway planning, namely, the formation of freight trains and their routes along the railway network of the mining company is considered. The statement of the problem including parameters of the problem, variables, system of constraints and target function is presented. An integer formulation of the problem, taking into account the constraints of a particular mining company, is proposed. The problem of railroad planning is relevant despite the various approaches and solutions available, since each case encounters different constraints. This formalisation differs from the others because there are different types of locomotives, and hence different capacities, and there are different types of materials to be transported. Four different categories of restrictions are presented. In addition, the existence of an extensive network of stations, a huge number of non-stationary constraints and other factors significantly increase the dimensionality of such problems, which increases the interest of researchers to them and contributes to the emergence of new and the development of existing methods and approaches to their solution. In the introduction, a description and features of the considered railway network of a mining company are presented. It then presents the formulation of the problem to be formalised, including parameters, variables, constraint system and target function. Then a numerical example with a solution is given. The integer linear programming method is used as a method for solving this problem. An example of scheduling freight trains for a network including four stations connected by double-track runs and having a star form is considered. The task of constructing routes is not considered in this example, as it is a separate complex task and is not required for this example, as there is a direct path from each departure station to each destination station.