Optimization Models for Multi-period Railway Rolling Stock Assignment

It is necessary for railway companies to construct daily schedules of assigning rolling stocks to utilization paths. A utilization path consists of a series of trains that a particular rolling stock performs in a day. A mixed integer programming model based on Lai et al. [1] is presented and is shown that straightforward applications of the model result in too much computational time and also inappropriate assignment schedules due to end effects. We show that the model can be modified to alleviate these difficulties, and also show that the repeated applications of the optimization model in the rolling horizon allow to generate a feasible assignment schedule for a longer period of time thus indicating the feasibility of the optimization approach.