Ultra-Long-Distance High-Speed Railways Night Trains Operations: Differentiation Mode

Abstract

Night trains running on ultra-long-distance high-speed railways face certain difficulties. This paper proposes a differentiated operation mode for night-running trains on ultra-long-distance high-speed railways to ensure the completion of maintenance operations during each “skylight,” that is, the window of time available for maintenance between operating hours, on each section to ensure the completion of transportation tasks through a reasonable combination of key points under different modes of operation. The difficulties of operating night trains on ultra-long-distance high-speed railways are analyzed, and optimization strategies for use in different modes are proposed. On this basis, differentiated patterns of night trains on ultra-long-distance high-speed railways are examined with corresponding models. A time-space relief strategy to improve conflict resolution for night trains in ultra-long-distance passages under skylight constraints is proposed.