Modelling a railway freight transport system

In this paper the authors formulate the railway freight transportation problem (RFTP) as a mixed integer linear programming problem and show that this problem has some features common with well-known problems such as the vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW), pickup and delivery problem with time windows (PDPTW), multi-period vehicle routing problem with time windows (MPVRPTW), and job shop scheduling problem. They identify some distinguishing features and present a heuristic that seeks to balance the cost of transportation and the cost of delays. The approach developed in this paper can be used for choosing the appropriate mix of infrastructural facilities (such as wagons, platforms, yards, engine power etc.) in the railway transportation sector.