Combined empty and loaded train scheduling for dedicated freight railway corridors

The efficient utilization of expensive rolling-stock has become imperative for all railroads. In this paper, we study the combined empty and loaded train-scheduling problem for the upcoming dedicated freight corridors in India. Existing optimization models either do not consider the simultaneous optimization of the loaded and empty flows or are not solvable for large railroads. Our model is the first of its kind to incorporate link capacity constraints in an IP formulation for this operational level problem. A simulated annealing algorithm hybridized with a constructive heuristic is proposed as the solution method. The computational experiments show that the proposed heuristic performs well both in terms of runtime and solution quality.