Tactical scheduling of rail operations: a Petri net approach

In this paper, we present Petri net models for the tactical scheduling of railroad operations. The notion of schedule feasibility is explained, notions of various kinds of rail operations-meeting, overtaking, following, and double-track section operations-are briefly reviewed; then the corresponding Petri net models are constructed and fully discussed. Topics on how to use these models to analyze the schedule feasibility are also covered.