Capacity constraints in delay management

We consider (small) disturbances of a railway system. In case of such delays, one has to decide if connecting trains should wait for delayed feeder trains or if they should depart on time, i.e. which connections should be maintained and which can be dropped. Finding such wait-depart decisions (minimizing e.g. the average delay of the passengers) is called the delay management problem. In the literature, the limited capacity of the tracks (meaning that no two trains can use the same piece of track at the same time) has so far been neglected in the delay management problem. In this paper we present models and first results integrating these important constraints. We develop algorithmic approaches that have been tested at a real-world example provided by Deutsche Bahn AG.