Automation of forecasting train scheduling
In reconstruction and development of railway transport junctions, there are two important interrelated tasks: modeling movement of trains on adjacent districts and intrasite sections and simulation of junction station operations. Simulation system ISTRA has been repeatedly and successfully used for the second task. A new and promising area is the development of train schedule modeling methods using this system. The paper describes the basics of main simulation modeling methods of train operation at railway sections. Simulation model takes into account the different ways of regulation of movement of trains and control. As a result, technologically correct traffic schedule is developed, with minimum operational delays. The schedule takes into account station and inter-train intervals, travel times for various train categories, track development scheme of separate stations, train priorities, windows and warnings. Reliability of the forecast train schedule is evaluated by comparison with actual train schedule based on the percentage of train arrival times falling within the confidence interval. Approximately 85 % of the experiments were within this range. The other experiments showed that the projected train schedule is more effective than the actual one. To determine the effectiveness, the results of automated calculation were compared with the most widely employed calculation type that uses the average train travel time from the points of their current deployment. The accuracy of this automated analysis was significantly higher. The method can be effectively used for predicting the time of arrival of trains at the marshalling yard for train formation forecasting system and for development of optimization procedures used in the development of regulatory and variant train schedules.