Handling of railway operation problems with RailSys

To plan future system requirements and to evaluate the impact of these requirements on the railway system, efficient computer aided tools are needed. The complexity of the railway system, combined with the number of boundary conditions, results in a very large number of possible variations. Therefore, several alternatives have to be investigated which extends the duration of the whole planning process. Additionally the costs for e. g. infrastructure extensions of the network are very high and the accurate planning is the key to prevent investment mistakes. The uncertain estimation of future development of public transport traffic raises the number of variables. The intensity of train services can change between two timetable periods while the building of infrastructure needs in general several years. To enable the detailed planning of infrastructure, timetable and the use of vehicles for several variants and alternatives, the system RailSys has been developed. The software includes accurate tools for running time calculation, infrastructure mapping, timetable-construction and -evaluation and the planning of vehicle rosters. RailSys uses a microscopic description of the real world in the model to reduce the risk of wrong decisions based on an inexact planning. The planning process has to take into consideration, that investing in railway infrastructure or vehicles is in general a long-term investment. On one state of the art computer, it is now possible to model the whole German railway network (approx. 40.000 km of track) with approx. 30.000 trains in RailSys.