Chapter 35: Railway Scheduling

Railway scheduling is the process by which the “demand” for rail transport (passenger and freight) is brought together with “supply side” constraints (such as available infrastructure capacity, rolling stock, and staff) to produce timetables and resource plans that meet the demand at an appropriate level of cost. This process is also known as “train planning.”

Timetables show how trains travel over time and usually take the form of “tables” or “time–distance graphs.”

Resource plans map rolling stock and staff to the trains that are in the timetables, taking into account all the operational, legal, and union rules that need to be applied.