Scheduling and Routing Algorithms for Rail Freight Transportation

The paper deals with scheduling and routing rail freight transportation. There are provided mathematical descriptions of constraints in the real rail transportation such as timetables of passenger trains, safety time buffers etc. We developed an algorithm which determines the fastest route of cargo train in a railway network. It is based on Dijkstra algorithm idea. We experimentally proved that determination of the fastest route in even large railway network, where movement of a large number of trains was planned, takes place in a time acceptable for decision makers.