Method of planning the movement of trains using pre-allocation of resources

• US 20080109124A1
• Filed: 11/02/2006
• Published: 05/08/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 11/02/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: General Electric Company
• Original Assignee: General Electric Company
• Inventors: Wills, Mitchell Scott, Daum, Wolfgang, Hershey, John, Markley, Randall
• Granted Patent: US 8,433,461 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 701/19
• CPC Class Codes: B61L 27/12 Preparing schedules

Abstract

A method of scheduling the movement of trains using the creation and the pre-allocation of virtual resources in order to develop an optimized schedule of actual train movement.

Claims

1. A method of scheduling the movement of plural trains over a rail system, comprising the steps of:

(a) identifying the plural trains to be scheduled;

(b) generating a first movement plan for the plural trains;

(c) determining the efficiency of the generated first movement plan;

(d) adding at least one virtual consist to be scheduled;

(e) generating a second movement plan for the plural trains and the virtual consist;

(f) determining the efficiency of the generated second movement plan;

(g) evaluating the efficiencies of the first and second movement plans;

(h) selecting the first or second movement plan to control the movement of the plural trains as a function of the evaluated efficiencies.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the efficiencies of the first and second movement plan are determined by evaluating the variance of expected schedule for a train.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of selecting includes selecting the second movement plan if the efficiency of the second movement plan exceeds the efficiency of the first movement plan by a predetermined amount.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein a database is maintained containing the historical performance of actual consists, and the virtual consist is generated as a function of the historical performance of actual consists.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein a database is maintained containing the historical performance of actual consists, and the virtual consist is added at a location selected as a function of the historical performance of actual consists.

6. A method of scheduling the movement of an actual consist over a rail system, comprising the steps of:

(a) identifying the actual consist to be scheduled;

(b) adding at least one virtual consist to be scheduled;

(c) generating a movement plan of the actual and virtual consists;

(d) controlling the movement of the actual consists in accordance with generated movement plan.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the virtual consist is generated as a function of the historical performance of actual consists.

8. The method of claim 6 further comprising:

(e) substituting an actual consist for the virtual consist; and

(f) controlling the movement of the substituted actual consist in accordance with the generated movement plan.