Grading Optimization Model of Empty Car Distribution on Large Scale Railway Network

Empty car distribution can make the empty car move from unloading station to the loading station to ensure the continuity of transportation and fulfill the loading plan. The optimization of empty car plan not only affects the implementation cost, but also affects the minimal number of cars which relates directly to the benefit of the railway enterprises. It also indirectly affects the social benefits of whole railway network. Consequently, how to schedule the empty cars becomes one of the most attentive and widely researched projects. A kind of grading optimizing model of empty car distribution on the railway network is presented in this paper. Railway network nodes starting from the dividing-point that receives the empty cars are divided into different grades according to the direction of cars. Aimed at the minimum arithmetic product of car number and distance, it adopts the calculating method on-table to optimize one by one. The optimizing results of every stage are based on the former ones, and then the empty cars distribution optimization of the whole network will be gained. This model can not only reduce node number remarkably but save lots of computing time and space. It is applicable in the case the node number is more or less. It is an effective approach to solve the problem of empties distribution.