Preventive condition-based tamping for railway tracks: a decision support model

The paper will analyze how methods from Operations Research (OR) can support the optimization of maintenance of railway tracks, aimed at minimizing the tamping cost. This paper presents a Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) model which is designed to optimize the predictive railway tamping activities for the planning horizon up to four years. Five technical and economic aspects are taken into account to schedule tamping: (1) track quality (the standard deviation of the longitudinal level) degradation over time; 2) track quality thresholds based on train speed limits; 3) track geometrical alignment; 4) tamping machine operation factors, and finally, 5) the discount rate. The usage of the model is explored in case studies, including a Danish railway track between Odense and Fredericia with 57.2 km of length. The total cost can be reduced with up to 50% using the proposed model, which shows its great potential to support railway tamping planning in practice.