New course on Rail Traffic Planning and Management
In the coming winter term we will be offering a new course on Rail Traffic Planning & Management introducing core concepts and state-of-the-art modelling techniques for railway timetabling and capacity management
ED150037 Rail Traffic Planning and Management:
The course discusses current concepts and methods for rail traffic planning. Following a short introduction to key components in railway systems, approaches for timetabling, capacity planning, and dispatching are discussed.
After successful completion of the course
• Participants are familiar with and can identify rail traffic planning procedures and stakeholders,
• understand concepts and current procedures in railway timetabling
• can classify different planning problems in railway system and traffic design and their respective scopes,
• are able to evaluate methodological approaches for capacity planning, railway timetabling, and delay propagation modelling and mitigation
• can apply the methodologies in small real-world inspired problems
Visit by Mathias Merforth and Andrea Cárdenas Sánchez from GIZ
This week Mathias Merforth and Andrea Cárdenas Sánchez joined us for a workshop to discuss academic collaborations in transportation engineering with Mexico and gave a guest lecture in our Seminar on Railway Systems. Thank you for the interesting discussion and the insightful lecture on sustainability in rail transport system design with showcases from Mexico!
Technical Visit Munich North Marshalling Yard
On 28.06., the course on Railway Operations took the opportunity to get hands-on experience in managing shunting operations in the Munich North marshalling yard. Led by Philipp Ullmann from DB InfraGO, we could investigate modern electronic interlocking and train movement control, as well as the logistical processes and technical components involved in performing the classification and composition of trains in the marshalling yard.
Guest Lecture by Albrecht Morast (Thales Group) on Railway Operations and Train Control and Railway Operations
Last Wednesday Dr. Albrecht Morast from Thales Ground Transportation Systems joined us for a guest lecture explaining about train control concepts and different operating conditions and signalling component designs in Europe and in Saudi Arabia.
Technical Visit to Berg am Laim
On 26.04., the course on Railway Operations took the opportunity to get hands-on experience in managing train traffic in Berg am Laim. Using technology from the beginning of the 20th century we saw how interlocking principles work and are used to ensure the safety of rail operations.
A big thank you to Philipp Ullmann and his team from DB InfraGO for making this possible.
New courses on rail traffic and operations
In the summer term we will be offering three new courses:
ED150033 Railway Operations:
The course provides an introduction to railway operations and explains the fundamental technical, organizational and logistical processes in rail traffic operations. We will discuss how the rail transport system works and how different system components and personnel work together to ensure the safety and performance of railway operations.
ED150032 Rail Traffic Lab:
In this course, we will take a look "behind the scenes" of rail traffic planning software tools in order to understand and get hands-on experience in the basic concepts and peculiarities of rail-specific algorithmic approaches for train routing, timetabling and capacity planning. The course is a hands-on programming exercise where we will implement and test different approaches for train routing, timetabling, and capacity planning.
ED150034 Railway Systems Seminar:
In this interactive seminar we will review design perspectives on rail transportation systems. Complementing other courses focussing on densely operated, high-performance railway systems in Europe or East Asia, we will particularly focus on options and characteristics for less-developed networks.
We look forward to seeing you!
New project on capacity modelling of railway lines
In a project funded by the German Railway Research Center we investigate the applicability and comparability of analytic and simulation-based methods and models for railway capacity planning on railway lines together with our partners trenoLab and DLR
New thesis topics online
Dear Students,
in the Section Teaching you will find several new thesis projects at the Professorship for Design and Operation of Rail Transport Systems to be filled asap. Please also do not hesitate to contact us with your own ideas.
New Publication on Rollout Strategies for new Signalling Systems in Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management
An article written together with Jakob Geischberger and Alessa Isberner at DLR on rollout strategies for migrating railway networks to ETCS L2 signalling without track-side train detection has been published in the Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management, available open access here. In the article a nonlinear optimization approach to maximize benefits in OTI equipment of trains and rollout of new signalling systems for railway networks is presented and compared to different heuristic migration strategies.
Successful participation at the 4th International Railway Symposium in Aachen
Last week the Professorship for Design and Operation of Rail Transport Systems participated at the 4th International Railway Symposium in Aachen. Apart from many interesting conversations and insights into the current state of research on rail transport systems, we were happy to present the current state of our research together with DLR on the comparative evaluation of railway station infrastructure design paradigms in different countries.
New course on "Rail Traffic Planning and Management offered in winter term
In the upcoming winter term we will offer a new course on rail traffic planning and management. The course will provide an introduction to rail traffic modelling. Following the discussion processes and dependencies in timetabling, capacity management, and train operatsions, current approaches and advanced methods for timetabling and capacity planning will be introduced.
The course is directed at persons interested in algorithmic approaches for rail traffic planning. It is particularly suitable to prepare for a MSc or PhD thesis in the area. As part of the lecture, computer projects will be handed out to allow for hands-on experience with the concepts presented in the lectures.
New research group on Design and Operation of Public Rail Transport Systems (RTS) established at TU Munich
The Professorship for Design and Operation of Public Rail Transport Systems was officially founded when Norman Weik was appointed on September 1. Our research focuses on developing methods and algorithms for decision support in rail traffic planning and management. We look forward to get in contact and to work together in both research and teaching for rail transportation systems.