Cooperation research for locomotives assignment and train scheduling problems

We research the cooperation optimization problem of assigning locomotives and scheduling trains in single-track railway system. To solve the considered problem, we develop a high-efficient cooperation optimization approach which includes a well-designed locomotive assignment algorithm. We conduct extensive case studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed cooperation optimization approach. The results show that in most of the cases, the proposed approach is similar or prior to CPLEX. In the best case, the cooperation approach increases the solution quality by as high as 7.15%. Since the proposed approach takes only several milliseconds while CPLEX uses 3 hours to solve the same problem, we conclude that the cooperation approach is better to be used in on-line applications.