An Ant Algorithm for the Reception-Departure Line Assignment Problem

Scheduling reception-departure line assignment plan (RDLAP) is an important part of daily dispatch work in railway station. RDLAP is similar to, but more complicated than the classical job-shop scheduling problem (JSP). Regarding the railway station tracks and train running routes as machines, all trains in this railway station as jobs, RDLAP is very similar to a three operations, multiple machines JSP, but it has many constraints such as obeying train working diagram (TWD), station track using plan (TUP), locomotive utilization plan (LUP), number of train running route, minimal and maximal technical operating time etc. RDLAP is to assign every train a proper reception-departure line satisfying the constraints so that no two operations belonging to different objects (train or locomotive) process the same resource (tracks and routes) at the same time. The goal is to minimize the total waiting time in reception-departure yard. In this paper, we introduced a mathematics model of RDLAP, and proposed an ant algorithm to solve this problem. Computational experiments are derived from the example of Beijing Western Passenger Railway Station. Results verified the potential of the algorithm in meeting the demand of dispatching centre