Verification of significant infrastructure changes in part of the junction in relation to planned changes in train flows.

Description:

Brno, the center of the Moravia region, is located in the eastern part of the Czech Republic. Brno railway junction started its history as a small terminal for trains from Breclav or Vienna; connections to railway lines from other directions joined later, leading to infrastructure development according to the operational needs. Nowadays, the Brno junction belongs to few major Czech railway junctions.

problems and study goals:

The Brno railway junction is facing the challenge of modern railway operation. However, due to its location in the heart of the town and urban development, there are no more possibilities for infrastructure extension and the junction is suffering major problems - limited infrastructure and its current layout, old equipment, etc. In order to accommodate current transportation needs, massive infrastructure and operational changes are needed and since the main station is blocking the urban development, the town officials are even considering to relocate it to other location outside of the town's center. The main objectives of the project could be summarized into following points:

• Verification of the distribution of train routes during 24 hour operation.
• Assessment of the capacity of specified junction infrastructure parts.
• Evaluation of consequences of given (random) train delays.

study results:

In order to achieve given objectives, detailed simulation model of the junction operation has been created in our simulation tool Villon. The model comprises Brno main passenger station, connections to adjacent stabling sidings, railway lines, as well as stops Židenice a Černovice. Two main scenarios were investigated - proposed train timetable with no delays and proposed timetable with randomly delayed trains. During the experiments with the model, the proposed timetable has been adjusted in order to accommodate all required train traffic and consequences of train delays have been studied. The investigation of infrastructure capacity included precise evaluation of various measures, e.g. number of trains entering and leaving the junction per hour, inbound and outbound tracks utilisation, occupation of platform tracks, occupation and direction change count of track switches, etc.