AN ANALYSIS OF NODE CAPACITY AND TERMINAL MANAGEMENT ON INDIAN RAILWAYS

ABSTRACT

Fixed infrastructure forms a large part of the investment base of a railway. Along with demand assessment, service planning and customer oriented operations, good strategies for the efficient use of fixed assets are crucial for the financial performance and viability of any railway. The management of freight terminals and nodes (junctions) on the Indian Railways is of great significance from the operations management goal of effective utilization of resources as well as the commercial goal of adding value to services and customer benefit. It is a practically challenging problem with a number of dimensions to it, as well as a theoretically challenging problem in terms of modeling and computation. Although we have not specifically discussed semi-automated support for node traffic management, it is an area where new developments are taking place, and where Indian Railways should take the lead in technology and software development. Managerially, more awareness regarding terminal performance, definition of some performance measures and integrated analysis of options to do with node capacity will go some way in addressing the issue.

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