Originating from papers presented at the 18th International Conference on Railway Engineering Design and Operation, this book provides up-to-date research on the use of advanced systems, promoting their general awareness throughout the management, design, manufacture and operation of railways and other emerging passenger, freight and transit systems. A key emphasis is placed on the use of computer systems in advanced railway engineering. The included works are compiled from a variety of specialists interested in the development of railways, including managers, consultants, railway engineers, designers of advanced train control systems and computer specialists. Topics covered include: Traffic safety, security and monitoring; Train and railways analysis; Operation of rail networks; Advanced train control; Energy-efficient design; Traffic modelling and simulation.

Super-Speed Rail (SSR) system is the fifth mode of transportation after ships, trains, automobiles and aircrafts, featuring characteristics of ultra-high-speed (1000-2000 km/h), high safety, low energy consumption, low noise, no vibration, no pollution and so on.This unique compendium analyzes its operation principle, system architecture and attribute characteristics, discusses its feasibility, and discusses the global integration issues in the SSR environment.The useful reference text highlights terminologies and principles of SSR. It's a comprehensive analysis of the past, present and future of SSR from the system engineering point of view. Thereby, the novel book plays a leading role in the development of SSR worldwide.

Robot Systems for Rail Transit Applications presents the latest advances in robotics and artificial intelligence for railway systems, giving foundational principles and running through special problems in robot systems for rail transit. State-of-the art research in robotics and railway systems is presented alongside a series of real-world examples. Eight chapters give definitions and characteristics of rail transit robot systems, describe assembly and collaborative robots in manufacturing, introduce automated guided vehicles and autonomous rail rapid transit, demonstrate inspection robots, cover trench robots, and explain unmanned aerial vehicles. This book offers an integrated and highly-practical way to approach robotics and artificial intelligence in rail-transit.

Optimization Models for Rail Car Fleet Management represents the result of multi-year efforts to provide readers with insights into one of the most important areas of railway transport management. The book covers mathematical procedures for the effective and efficient utilization of railway freight cars, developed models for optimization methods, heterogeneity and partial substitutability of freight cars, research and development in rail freight car fleet management models, and the stochastic and dynamic nature of the supply, demand and traveling time of freight cars, among other topics.

Forming the 16th volume from this successful series, this book contains papers from the 16th International Conference on Railway Engineering Design and Operation. The included papers are a collection of works from researchers, academics and practitioners involved in railway engineering. There is a continuing need to update the use of advanced systems, promoting their general awareness throughout the management, design, manufacture and operation of railways and other emerging passenger, freight and transit systems. By emphasising the use of computer systems in advanced railway engineering, this book contributes to this goal. These research studies will be of interest to all those involved in the development of railways, including managers, consultants, railway engineers, designers of advanced train control systems and computer specialists.

High-speed turnouts, a key technology for high-speed railways, have a great influence on the safe and stable running of high-speed trains. Design of High-Speed Railway Turnouts: Theory and Applications, comprehensively introduces the technical characteristics and requirements of high-speed turnouts, including design theories and methods of turnout layout geometry, wheel and rail relations, track stiffness, welded turnout, turnout conversion, turnout components, and manufacture and laying technologies of turnouts. Analyzing the operational problems of China's high-speed turnout in particular, this book discusses the control of structure irregularity, state irregularity, geometrical irregularity and dynamic irregularity during the design, manufacture, laying, and maintenance of turnouts. At the end of this reference book, the author provides high-speed turnouts management methods, maintenance standards, testing and monitoring technology, and maintenance technology. Design of High-Speed Railway Turnouts: Theory and Applications will enable railway technicians all over the world to develop an in-depth knowledge of the design, manufacture, laying, and maintenance technology of high-speed turnouts.

The rail-based transit system is a popular public transportation option, not just with members of the public but also with policy makers looking to install a form of convenient and rapid travel. Even for moving bulk freight long distances, a rail-based system is the most sustainable transportation system currently available. The Handbook of Research on Emerging Innovations in Rail Transportation Engineering presents the latest research on next-generation public transportation infrastructures. Emphasizing a diverse set of topics related to rail-based transportation such as funding issues, policy design, traffic planning and forecasting, and engineering solutions, this comprehensive publication is an essential resource for transportation planners, engineers, policymakers, and graduate-level engineering students interested in uncovering research-based solutions, recommendations, and examples of modern rail transportation systems.

Data services, especially those involving multimedia applications, can often be bandwidth intensive and accessed simultaneously by a large number of users. As such, efforts are being made to replace conventional network infrastructure, based on copper lines and coaxial cables, with fiber optic networks for improved performance. Optical Transmission and Networks for Next Generation Internet Traffic Highways provides a broader perspective of the parameters involved in the transmission of optical signals using optical soliton systems, OCDM-WDM, SCM-WDM and OTDM-WDM. This timely publication is ideal for use by technical managers, graduate students, engineers and technicians involved in the fiber-optics industry, and scientists working in the field of optical communications.

This book reflects the latest research trends, methods and experimental results in the field of electrical and information technologies for rail transportation, which covers abundant state-of-the-art research theories and ideas. As a vital field of research that is highly relevant to current developments in a number of technological domains, the subjects it covered include intelligent computing, information processing, Communication Technology, Automatic Control, etc. The objective of the proceedings is to provide a major interdisciplinary forum for researchers, engineers, academicians as well as industrial professionals to present the most innovative research and development in the field of rail transportation electrical and information technologies. Engineers and researchers in academia, industry, and the government will also explore an insight view of the solutions that combine ideas from multiple disciplines in this field. The volumes serve as an excellent reference work for researchers and graduate students working on rail transportation, electrical and information technologies.

The proceedings collect the latest research trends, methods and experimental results in the field of electrical and information technologies for rail transportation. The topics cover novel traction drive technologies of rail transportation, safety technology of rail transportation system, rail transportation information technology, rail transportation operational management technology, rail transportation cutting-edge theory and technology etc. The proceedings can be a valuable reference work for researchers and graduate students working in rail transportation, electrical engineering and information technologies.

The proceedings collect the latest research trends, methods and experimental results in the field of electrical and information technologies for rail transportation. The topics cover novel traction drive technologies of rail transportation, safety technology of rail transportation system, rail transportation information technology, rail transportation operational management technology, rail transportation cutting-edge theory and technology etc. The proceedings can be a valuable reference work for researchers and graduate students working in rail transportation, electrical engineering and information technologies.

Railroads altered the landscape of the United States. Within a few decades of the invention of the locomotive, railways stretched from coast to coast, enabling people and goods to travel far greater distances than ever before, completely altering our concept of time and space. And while railroads may seem like an "old" technology, they continue to be an essential means of transporting both goods and people, and new technologies are making the railroads an increasingly relevant resource for the 21st century. This volume in the Greenwood Technographies series provides an accessible overview of the nearly 200 years of the growth and development of this historically significant--and popular --technology. The Railroad: The Life Story of a Technology gives students and railroad enthusiasts plenty of information on the development of this popular technology: * Chronicles the early years of the railroad, from early wooden tramways in Massachusetts, to the famous "Tom Thumb" * Discusses the important technological "failures," such as the narrow-gauge craze of the late nineteenth century with track widths as small as two feet. * Covers all aspects of railroad technology -- everything from the structure of the track to communications to what powers the locomotive. * Links the technology to broader social developments, such as the decline of the railroad in the mid-20th century to outmoded governmental and labor restrictions, and the current rise of railroad technology as a result of new managerial techniques. The volume includes a timeline of important dates in railroad history, a glossary of important terms, and a selected bibliography of works appropriate for further research.

This book proposes a general methodology to introduce Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) integrity, starting from a rigorous mathematical description of the problem. It highlights the major issues that designers need to resolve during the development of GNSS-based systems requiring a certain level of confidence on the position estimates. Although it follows a general approach, the final chapters focus on the application of GNSS integrity to rail transportation, as an example. By describing the main requirements in the context of train position function, one of which is the safe function of any train control system, it shows the critical issues associated with the concept of safe position integrity. In particular, one case study clarifies the key differences between the avionic domain and the railway domain related to the application of GNSS technologies, and identifies a number of railway-signaling hazards linked with the use of such technology. Furthermore, it describes various railway-signaling techniques to mitigate such hazards to prepare readers for the future evolution of train control systems, also based on the GNSS technology. This unique book offers a valuable reference guide for engineers and researchers in the fields of satellite navigation and rail transportation.

The papers presented in this volume aim to update the use of advanced systems, promoting their general awareness throughout the management, design, manufacture and operation of railways and other emerging passenger, freight and transit systems. The book particularly emphasizes the use of computer systems in advanced railway engineering.Topics covered include: Communications and signalling; Operations quality; Energy supply and consumption; Monitoring and maintenance; Computer simulations Planning and policy; Operational planning; Safety and security; Rescheduling; Timetable planning.

For much of the postwar era, French society had a contradictory view of passenger trains, scorning them as quaint anachronisms on the one hand, yet also fearing their economic and social impact. All this changed with the introduction of the famed Train a Grande Vitesse (TGV) between Paris and Lyon in the early 1980s. In vivid detail, Meunier describes the political, economic, and social factors that both helped and hindered the development of the world's fastest, most technologically advanced train.

The present-day enthusiasm in France for high-speed rail travel dates only to the successful launch of the now-famous TGV in 1981. Until now, most published accounts of French high-speed rail have been of a technical nature and have ignored or minimized the historical, political, economic, and social context. Historians have been left with detailed descriptions of locomotives and experimental test runs, but there has been scant information cercerning why the machines were built and why the tests were carried out in the first place. This book is the first full-length treatment of high-speed rail travel and the bibliography is one of the most complete on the subject.

The former Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire, India remains, by any measure, a major economic and political actor on the world scene. Without her extensive railway network—completed against all odds by her British colonial masters—it is impossible to imagine what might have become of the diverse lands and peoples of the subcontinent. These railway networks brought them together as a colony; these networks fostered the nationalism that would be Britain's downfall. This rail network both remade the physical landscape and brought social-cultural cohesion to a diverse and wide-ranging populace. It would be common rail travel that Gandhi would employ to reach the masses. From its romantic mystique to its dangerous reality, it is rail travel today that keeps vital social, cultural, economic and political forces moving. India's railroad history serves as a unique lens to her larger story of triumph over adversity. By 1905, India had the world's fourth largest railway network—a position it retains in the early 21st century. The railroads were at the organizational and technological center of many of the inter-related economic, political, social, cultural, and ecological transformations that produced modern India through, and out of, its colonial past. In addition to this vast technical achievement, and (in keeping with the series focus), there is an equally important and wide-sweeping human-interest tale to be told with evocative vignettes of the triumph of the human spirit (one billion strong!) in the face of great adversity.

This book describes the second phase of the Qinghai-Tibetan railway construction project and is the first technological book discussing the geological routing of the Qinghai-Tibetan railway project on the "roof of the world." Based on practical experience of railway construction work, it provides a substantial number of examples with detailed descriptions and conclusions. The complex geological environment of the Qinghai-Tibetan railway as well as the selection and optimization of the route are illustrated vividly and clearly with quotes, figures, photos, and tables. Connecting Golmud and Lhasa, it has a total length of 1142 km and at the Tanggula Pass has an altitude of 5072m-higher than any other in the world. A 960 km section is on a plateau at altitudes above 4000 m, and 550 km are in the permafrost region, making it the world's longest and highest railway in the permafrost plateau region. The book is a model for the integration of theory and practice, making it a valuable reference source for civil engineering professionals working in geological routing in permafrost plateau regions, active fault zones, meizoseismal areas, nature reserves, and regions with geohazards such as steep slopes, sand and snow drifts and geothermal hazards.

Safe and high-efficiency operation are two main issues in rail transportation. This book focuses on these two key issues, bringing together a wealth of research to offer theoretical and technical support for rail operations and maintenance. In addition, it presents a comprehensive active safety assurance system for rail transportation, which includes the quantitative state identification and prediction of train components; rail transportation safety and reliability assessment methods; and rail transportation risk assessment at the rail networks level, which achieves the quantitative and high-precision monitoring of complex systems in real-time. In addition, it extends active safety based theory to safety prognostic analysis in the traffic system. Lastly, representative case studies verify that the theory is suitable for the actual traffic system.

This book on the dynamics of rail vehicles is developed from the manuscripts for a class with the same name at TU Berlin. It is directed mainly to master students with pre-knowledge in mathematics and mechanics and engineers that want to learn more. The important phenomena of the running behaviour of rail vehicles are derived and explained. Also recent research results and experience from the operation of rail vehicles are included. One focus is the description of the complex wheel-rail contact phenomena that are essential to understand the concept of running stability and curving. A reader should in the end be able to understand the background of simulation tools that are used by the railway industry and universities today.

This outstanding thesis characterises the aerodynamic flow around a container freight train; investigating how changing container loading configurations affect the magnitude of aerodynamic forces measured on a container. 1/25th scale moving-model freight train experiments were carried out at the University of Birmingham's TRAIN rig facility to investigate slipstream velocities and static pressure, as well as measuring, using a specifically designed on-board pressure monitoring system, the aerodynamic loads on containers. Results were compared with full scale data and assessed in terms European standards for trackside worker and passenger safety limits. Rail vehicle aerodynamic studies have tended to previously focus on high speed passenger trains in line with increases in train speed. The research presented within this thesis highlights the issues associated with the aerodynamic development around a freight train, providing the foundations for further research and a basis from which to develop international safety standards in relation to freight, as well as high speed trains.