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Purpose: This case study aimed to diagnose the cause(s) of a seasonal, and objectionable odour reported by travellers and drivers in the railway cars of Australian passenger trains. The research questions were to: (1) identify whether significant microbial colonisation was present within the air handling system of trains and causing the odours; to (2) identify other potential sources and; (3) remedial options for addressing the issue. Methods: A mixed-methods, action research design was used adopted. Sections of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems from odour-affected trains were swabbed for bacteria and fungi and examined for evidence of wear, fatigue and damage on-site and off-site. Insulation foam material extracted from the walls of affected trains was also subjected to a chemical assessment following exposure to varying humidity and temperature conditions in a climate simulator. This was accompanied by a qualitative sensory characterisation. Results: Upon exposure to a variety of simulated temperature and humidity combinations to recreate the odour, volatile chemical compounds released from the insulation foam by water were identified as its likely cause. In addition, a range of potentially serious pathogenic and odour-causing microbes were cultured from the HVAC systems, although it is considered unlikely that bacterial colonies were the odour source. Conclusion: The research has implications for the sanitising and maintenance policies for HVAC systems on public transport, especially when operating in humid environments. The sanitary imposition, especially in the wake of COVID-19 may be required to ensure the safety of the travelling public and drivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an artificial intelligence-based Unified Power Quality Conditioner (AI-UPQC) and a unique Dynamic K-factor PI (DKPI) algorithm for PI-UPQC to address power quality issues in electrified railway systems. The widespread use of power electronic converters in modern traction drives has exacerbated problems such as harmonics, voltage fluctuations, and resonance phenomena. The proposed AI-UPQC utilizes artificial neural networks (ANNs) to generate optimal reference signals for controlling series and shunt active power filters. A detailed 25 kV, 50 Hz traction power supply system model is developed in MATLAB/Simulink to evaluate the AI-UPQC's performance. Simulation results demonstrate that the AI-UPQC significantly outperforms conventional PI-controlled UPQCs in reducing voltage and current total harmonic distortion (THD), improving power factor, and providing faster response times under varying load conditions. The AI-UPQC reduced source current THD from 25.16 to 1.12% and load voltage THD from 6.62 to 2.07%. Sensitivity analysis further validates the robustness of the proposed system across different operating parameters. The AI-UPQC shows promise as an effective solution for enhancing power quality in modern electrified railway networks.Article highlights: A new AI-based unified power quality conditioner significantly reduces voltage and current distortions in electrified railways. The AI control adapts to changing conditions, providing superior performance over conventional methods. Improved power quality enhances railway efficiency, reliability, and compatibility with utility grid standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predictive maintenance can help infrastructure managers to reduce costs and improve railway availability while ensuring safety. However, its accuracy depends on reliable data from various sources, especially track measurement data. When analysing track data over time, historical maintenance actions must be considered, as otherwise the interpretation of the data would be misleading. This research aims to address inconsistencies in recorded maintenance data by detecting unrecorded track works through track geometry evaluations. The main goal is to provide the foundations for accurate descriptions of track behaviour, supporting the implementation of effective predictive maintenance regimes. As part of the research, three different approaches are analysed and evaluated, whereby two of them are based on cross-sectional analyses and the third one detects track works in longitudinal track dimension. The results show that the CRAB algorithm produces the most statistically significant results. Conversely, the cumulative track geometry-based algorithm provides a homogeneous representation of past maintenance work and a result that is statistically only marginally inferior. Consequently, these two methods are best suited to build the foundation for making accurate cross-sectional conclusions about track geometry behaviour. This allows for the verification and enhancement of existing maintenance databases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Railways were an important driver of global economic growth in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Whilst their role is well documented in industrial economies, we know less about their macro‐economic impact in developing countries. In this paper, we first estimate the aggregate growth impact of Indian railways, one of the largest networks in the world in the early twentieth century. Then, we compare their impact in India to four emerging Latin American economies (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Uruguay) and the Cape colony. Using growth accounting techniques common to the cross‐country estimates, we argue that the aggregate growth impact of Indian railways was significant, increasing Indian gross domestic product (GDP) per capita by 13.5 per cent by 1912. We also find that the growth impact of Indian railways was similar to Brazil and Mexico, but smaller than Argentina and the Cape. Compared with the latter, India had a smaller size of railway freight revenues in the economy and lower wages to fares leading to lower passenger time savings. Railways were the most important infrastructure driver of economic growth in India during the first era of globalization from 1860 to 1912, but they contributed less than in richer and more dynamic developing economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sokoto Caliphate of northern Nigeria was the workshop of West Africa in the pre‐colonial nineteenth century, producing famous blue‐black cloth that reached many markets south of the Sahara as well as across it. Under British colonial rule this large handicraft textile industry was faced with the winds of foreign competition. We rely on a newly digitized set of colonial district reports to measure the impact of trade on northern Nigerian textile manufacturing and find that (contrary to British expectations) areas closer to railway stations were less likely to experience industrial decline. We argue that the resilience of local textiles relied on the low opportunity cost of dry‐season labour. Analysing a piece of tax microdata, we show that a low opportunity cost of labour outside of the rainy season was associated with a higher likelihood of engaging in textile by‐employment. Seasonal changes in relative factor prices were a trap as well as a refuge. Part‐time employment limited specialization and technological innovation, and can help to explain why northern Nigerian textiles eventually declined. Thus, beyond our particular case study, these results contribute to our understanding of the role of seasonality in determining the structure and pace of development of tropical economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis article asks why Tokyo’s crowded trains were largely absent from official discourses of viral risk in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic. While public transport environments were often framed as spaces of contagion in other countries, Japanese public health discourses instead tended to emphasize the viral safety of urban railway transport. Drawing on an analysis of media and expert discourse, auto-ethnographic fieldwork, and repeat interviews with commuters, this article examines the processes through which Tokyo’s urban railway network was extracted from discourses of viral risk. It identifies four factors that contributed to this: (1) dominant definitions of risk spaces in public health messaging, (2) trains’ integral role in the operation of socio-economic life, (3) elusiveness of public transport in the epidemiological data, and (4) a focus on “unruly” passenger conduct. This analysis of the selective treatment of viral risks is tied to a critical engagement with theoretical distinctions between “essential” and “existential” mobilities developed in prior anthropological scholarship on the pandemic. Exploring the discursive framing of pandemic mobility practices on one of the world’s most extensive urban railway networks, the article thus contributes to the anthropological study of mobilities and transport in Japan and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian railway histories are dominated by narratives of engineering triumphs, colonial expansion into empty land, and bringing civilisation and development through railway infrastructure. These settler‐colonial stories can be read back on themselves as histories and geographies of Aboriginal dispossession and colonial possession. Indeed, Aboriginal people, lands, waterways, and cultures have always been implicated in railway infrastructures, willingly or not. Aboriginal people’s entanglements with the New South Wales railways, to which we refer as “rail relations,” have involved dispossession, removal, employment, mobility, and travel, including the forced removal of children known as the Stolen Generations. These are relations of harm, loss, and grief but also of pride, connectivity, and survival. We argue in this paper that when Aboriginal communities engage in storying the New South Wales railways as Aboriginal they reassemble this infrastructure otherwise: not just as a tool of dispossession but also as life affirming. Indigenous storytelling can therefore overcome settler colonial erasure and the oversimplification of railway infrastructure hi/stories. Research about how Aboriginal lives have been interconnected with railways expansion and development is limited. While Aboriginal railway stories are continuously told within communities, they remain almost entirely silenced elsewhere. Overcoming the invisibility of Aboriginal rail relations is crucial as both truth‐telling of the past and to ensure more just infrastructural outcomes now and in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the perspectives of passengers who were railway users and how railways as a service can be uplifted with technological advancements through the introduction of information and communication technologies (ICTs). For this purpose, a questionnaire was designed comprised of six sections related to information on socio-economic-demographics, travel, station facilities, train facilities, customer care, and familiarity with and benefits of ICTs. A total of 800 respondents were recruited on trains and in railway stations to collect data through a random sampling technique. Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, factor analysis, bivariate correlation analysis, and ordered logistic regression analysis. The three hypotheses tested showed that (i) there is a correlation between socio-demographic factors, train frequency, and satisfaction levels, (ii) satisfaction with station and train facilities and customer care impacts users' travel likelihood with the train service, and (iii) users' familiarity with perceived benefits of ICTs influences passengers' travel likelihood with the train service. The results indicate that the users' satisfaction with attributes of station facilities, train facilities, and customer care and perceptions about ICTs significantly influences their travel frequency with the train service. This study is useful for multiple stakeholders, especially for railway management authorities, to provide inclusive services to passengers and to plan for future transportation, which should be well-equipped with ICTs, well-integrated with other transport modes, and well-connected with optimum stops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opening of Spain's first railway in 1848 inaugurated a short-lived period of railway euphoria that consumed the imaginations of Spaniards and resulted in the rapid development of nearly 5,000 km of track. While most historians of Spain's nineteenth century concede that the effort failed to trigger the industrialization many had hoped for, it did stimulate the minds of those primed to fantasize about the Spanish future then being constructed with iron and steam. Fueling these dreams of a hyper-modernized future was the dark specter of Spanish decline, a narrative with roots in the seventeenth century and an influential cultural force in the nineteenth. Nineteenth-century railway boosters and journalists frequently conjured up stirring images of a prostrate Spain being lifted out of the mire of decline and re-joining the nations of Europe. This article explores how popular anticipation at the prospect of railways prompted an infectious feeling of possibility that echoed across Spain and promised, if only for a bright and fleeting moment, to ease Spanish insecurities and allow the nation to finally free itself of the terrible burden of its past failures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featured Application: The presented results are intended for inclusion in the national methodology for the economic evaluation of railway infrastructure projects. This contribution is focused on the presentation of individual research results aimed at evaluating the socio-economic impacts associated with increasing the safety and reliability of the railway transport route. The goal of the research is to propose and subsequently verify an original approach for assessing the impact of the implementation of investment projects, including measures aimed at increasing the safety and reliability of railway transport routes, on the resulting number of occurrences that happen on the railway in the Czech Republic. The proposed procedure is based on several key documents. In addition to already existing national methodologies, these are mainly the database of occurrences managed by the Railway Administration of the Czech Republic, including approximately 1000 occurrences for each year of the evaluated period (2009–2018), and information on 33 projects on the railway transport route, where the effects of their implementation on the overall frequency of occurrences are examined events in the subject location. The output of the research is a methodical approach for assessing the impact of the implementation of projects aimed at increasing the safety and reliability of the railway transport route. We perceive the impact on the occurrences from the point of view of the frequency of their occurrence and from the point of view of the socio-economic impacts that are achieved as a result of the implementation of the projects. From the point of view of the frequency of occurrence, a reduction in its value of 4.63% was found. As part of the research, the impact on the occurrence of extraordinary events is also assessed in the context of the scope of the railway transport route, both with regard to the length of the reconstructed track and also with regard to traffic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa has a complex history of racialized (im)mobilities. During the social engineering of apartheid, the city became a racialized white space that was dependent on black migrant workers who were forced to live in the marginal spaces on the edge of the city. This daily commute was enabled through the construction of public transportation systems and commuter railways. This mundane and banal form of mobility became a key site of both repression and resistance during the apartheid era. The present article explores how these racialized railway mobilities were represented during the 'Drum decade' of the 1950s in South Africa. It explores how the short story, as a liminal genre positioned within local and transnational literary cultures, is mobilized to narrate railway mobilities during this transitional decade. Texts analyzed include the news reports and short stories by Can Themba, Es'kia Mphahlele, and Nat Nakasa. This article explores how the mobile public spaces of the railways and the mobile figures of railway passengers were mobilized in the Anglophone South African short story as a form of resistance to the repression of the apartheid era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a DEA analysis to compare the efficiency of the railways of Western and Eastern Europe and find while most railways of Western Europe are on the efficiency frontier, those of Eastern Europe are typically a long way from it. One explanation may be that the reform process only started much later in Eastern Europe than in the West, although it appears that Eastern Europe has largely caught up. Secondly, Eastern Europe suffered a significant loss of traffic after the end of the communist regime, and this may still be resulting in an excess of labour and assets. There is some evidence that this remains the case for labour and freight vehicles. Although the excess of freight vehicles may be largely vehicles out of service, they still contribute to the poor efficiency scores for Eastern Europe. It is also the case that the countries of Eastern Europe suffer some disadvantages in terms of population density. However, we believe that two aspects of policy play an important role in the poorer performance of Eastern European countries compared with Western. Firstly, is the poorer infrastructure quality associated with lower levels of investment. This shows up as less use of electric traction and slower train speeds, resulting in lower productivity of staff and assets. Despite the efforts of the European Commission to overcome this problem, there is still a long way to go. Secondly, is the strong use of public service obligations to maintain high levels of service with relatively low load factors. If it is desired to raise the efficiency of Eastern European railways, governments in Eastern Europe will need to consider whether they are specifying excessively high levels of service.

Infrastructure investments are being undertaken to improve efficiency, economic activity, and growth. Therefore, policy makers are increasingly looking for modelling tools that can evaluate the impact of transport infrastructure on the economy, firms and households from the lens of economic activity and equity. We have developed a large scale national CGE model for India that is calibrated to economic data as well as validated to data observed from the Indian Railways. The novelty of this work lies in three main areas (1) The CGE model incorporates multi-modal transport with road and rail (2) It is the largest model developed so far with 33 regions, 29 industries, 312,530 kms of highways and 126,366 km of Railways (3) Validation of the CGE model. The CGE model was able to predict the tonnage freighted on the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor to within 3.9 % accuracy. The Dedicated Freight Corridor Network (DFC) contributes a 2.94 % increase in the revenue for the railways as well as a 0.08 % increase in GDP. This implies that DFC can directly contribute INR 160 billion to the 2019 GDP. The CGE model distributed the benefits of faster and cheaper alternatives to the entire economy. This was observed during the evaluation of the road projects that were found to improve GDP, household welfare and rail revenue for rail, as well as improved equity.

The author examines the evolution of St. Petersburg and Moscow, the Russian capitals, into megacities under the influence of industrialization in the second half of the XIX century. The urbanization processes in these cities and the challenges they faced are analyzed within the body of the text. The source base is the materials of the statistics, journalism, travel guides and research papers on historical urbanism of the period. The article shows that in the second half of the XIX century, under the conditions of rapid industrialization, both capitals became the largest industrial and commercial centers of the Russian Empire, a situation which contributed to the rapid growth of the population of these cities and their urbanization. Both capitals faced urgent problems of large cities: housing, water and air pollution, which caused high morbidity and mortality among the population. At the same time, new urban trends emerged, in particular, zoning of urban space, and, both cities had al achieved considerable achievements in the modernization of their infrastructure: horse-drawn railways were constructed, gas, kerosene and even electric lighting was installed, and water was purified. Thus, in the second half of the XIX century, both Russian capitals went through the same purgatory that European capitals had gone through several decades earlier. While neither Moscow nor even St. Petersburg during this period had yet become attractive enough for tourists wishing to see the sights of a modern metropolis, nevertheless, both capitals grew to become appealing megacities in the early XX century.

Abstract This paper proposes an artificial intelligence-based Unified Power Quality Conditioner (AI-UPQC) and a unique Dynamic K-factor PI (DKPI) algorithm for PI-UPQC to address power quality issues in electrified railway systems. The widespread use of power electronic converters in modern traction drives has exacerbated problems such as harmonics, voltage fluctuations, and resonance phenomena. The proposed AI-UPQC utilizes artificial neural networks (ANNs) to generate optimal reference signals for controlling series and shunt active power filters. A detailed 25 kV, 50 Hz traction power supply system model is developed in MATLAB/Simulink to evaluate the AI-UPQC's performance. Simulation results demonstrate that the AI-UPQC significantly outperforms conventional PI-controlled UPQCs in reducing voltage and current total harmonic distortion (THD), improving power factor, and providing faster response times under varying load conditions. The AI-UPQC reduced source current THD from 25.16 to 1.12% and load voltage THD from 6.62 to 2.07%. Sensitivity analysis further validates the robustness of the proposed system across different operating parameters. The AI-UPQC shows promise as an effective solution for enhancing power quality in modern electrified railway networks.

Introduction. Transportation process experiences continuous and often unpredictable changes in the operational situation at stations, sections and proving grounds of the network. Stabilisation of transportation process requires operative control decisions, which today are made by dispatchers and duty workers of various levels on the basis of knowledge, experience, abilities and intuition using information received at automated work stations from numerous information systems. Development and introduction of automated information and control systems instead of information systems will increase technical and economic efficiency of operational management of transportation and expand the control zones of the duty dispatchers.Materials and methods. The paper proposes to classify factors affecting transportation process as internal and external. It examines the reasons for their formation and the nature of their impact on operational work.Results. The work establishes time parameters for the development of operational control decisions and proves the necessity of technical and economic evaluations in the selection of rational decisions. The work justifies the stages of implementation of information and control systems in terms of selecting the categories of dispatchers and on-duty workers whose automated work stations are subject to priority development as information and control workplaces. The authors consider the conditions for the construction of hierarchical simulation models of the operation of controlled objects for the selection of rational operational control decisions at specific workplaces.Discussion and conclusion. The research results can serve as a basis for the Russian Railways to create a programme for solving the urgent problem of transition from information to automated information and control systems for operational management of transportation process on Russian Railways.

Introduction. The rational operation of the locomotive fleet is based on coordination of the locomotive turnover schedule with the train traffic schedule that assume unconditional fulfillment of standard transportation jobs and no less strict compliance with technical and technological standards for locomotive and train operations at locomotive turnover and re-coupling stations. Coordination is intended to set up balance of locomotives at traction interchange points. However, in the course of transportation, the intra-day dislocation of the operating fleet reaches significant unevenness and leads to imbalance. This requires a system for dispatching traction resources to their turnover and recoupling stations which will help to preserve traction balance at the interchange points to compensate for uneven intraday dislocation of the operating fleet, rationalise the locomotive fleet operations, and improve line capacity.Materials and methods. The balance of traction resources at locomotive turnover and re-coupling stations in intra-day intervals is achieved by interval regulation of traction resources.Results. The paper proposes an approach to establishing a balance of traction resources at current interlocking stations as the simplest type of turnover and recoupling stations (as a rule, they do not have additional adjacencies, using a one-to-one traction exchange). The approach applies the correlation between fluctuations in train traffic speeds and the amount of required traction reserves within daily three-hour intervals.Discussion and conclusion. This approach helps to improve the traction resource balancing technology at the current junction stations, and create a basis for building a mechanism for dispatching regulation reserves.

Abstract A novel method is proposed for rail fastener detection based on millimetre‐wave (mmWave) radar, mmWave radar fastener counter (MMW‐FC), which can accurately detect and record the fasteners in real‐time as the train traverses its route. Under circumstances where GNSS signals remain unavailable for prolonged durations, precise train localisation can be accomplished by correlating the number of fasteners derived from this method with the corresponding track map. Initially, MMW‐FC utilises fast Fourier transform and adaptive beamforming to focus the energy reflected from fasteners. Subsequently, it applies an adaptive template‐matching algorithm to detect each fastener. Furthermore, by leveraging known fastener spacing and the average time for trains to pass adjacent fasteners, the Kalman filter can execute precise speed tracking, used as a speed reference when adjusting the matching template adaptively. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method can precisely count the fasteners the train encounters in diverse road and speed conditions. The fastener counter maintains the Counting Error less than 0.067%, the speed error stays below 1.8 km/h, and the maximum values of the mean absolute error and root mean square error for speed are 0.7337 and 0.9584 km/h, respectively.

The Spanish passenger railway market saw the entrance of two competitors in 2022–2023: the full-service operator Iryo and the low-cost operator Ouigo. Using a unique dataset of Spanish ticket price collected throughout an entire year and the Diff-In-Diff method, this paper investigates the impact on incumbent's prices of newcomers' entrance on the less congested corridors Madrid - Alicante and Madrid - Malaga/Sevilla. The Spanish government's strategy seems to be successful: the decision to lead the liberalisation process and the choice of having up to three asymmetric competitors induced a significant decrease in price even on the less attractive corridors, stimulating the demand and addressing the problem of under-utilization of some high-speed infrastructure. The results show that prices decreased by 28%–30% after nine months of competition. The impact has been the same on both the analysed corridors, despite the competition environment has been different in terms of number of competitors, pricing strategy and market share of those. • Spain is the first country with three competitors in the high-speed railway market. • Competition in high-speed rail in Spain reduced prices by 28%–30% in nine months. • The impact on incumbent's first-class and second-class prices was the same. • Both low-cost and full-service competitors similarly affected incumbent pricing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a wheel passes over a rail surface irregularity, the resulting vehicle excitations lead to the application of additional system forces to both the track and the vehicle. These forces contribute to an accelerated track geometry deterioration, which in turn results in increased costs. In a recent paper, a clear correlation between the presence of rail irregularities and poor track geometry quality was demonstrated. Rail surface irregularities thereby were quantified by raw data of a chord-based optical measurement system mounted on the regular track recording vehicle in Austria. This paper deals with deconvolution of the recorded data in order to guarantee irregularity quantification without any distortion. Two different deconvolution approaches are developed and validated by additional measurements. Using the deconvoluted data, previously published evaluations were repeated, and the impact of using deconvoluted data instead of chord values was analysed. The correlation between short-wave effects and track geometry quality can not only be confirmed; it is even stronger than predicted by the chord data. The results of the analysis demonstrate that irregularities with amplitudes exceeding 0.08 mm contribute to an accelerated deterioration in track geometry. Amplitudes of a greater severity result in track geometry levels that are up to 120% inferior to the average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article proposes a methodological approach to quantifying direct economic damage from unfavorable and hazardous natural processes and phenomena for railways—an element of the critical infrastructure of the Russian Federation. The methodology is based on a normative approach to assessing the replacement cost of railway lines, which varies depending on the cost of construction in the orographic and climatic conditions of a particular region. The results are presented in the context of municipalities, which makes it possible to better take into account intraregional differences and facilitates their comparison with parameters characterizing natural hazards (floods, hazardous slope-related and geocryological processes, etc.). The calculations showed that the maximum cost of replacing railway lines in the event of natural threats for the country as a whole is about RUB 11 trln in 2021 prices, or approximately 8.4% of Russia's GDP for this year. The first ten regions in terms of the maximum amount of probable damage—Irkutsk, Amur, and Sverdlovsk oblasts; Khabarovsk, Zabaykalsky, Krasnoyarsk, Altai, Krasnodar, and Primorsky krais; and the Republic of Buryatia—account for over 40% of the total replacement cost. It is in these regions that measures to protect the fixed assets of railway transport are particularly important. The obtained data can be used in studies of natural and man-made risk: by comparing them with parameters characterizing the impact of hazardous natural processes and phenomena, it is possible to predict the risk and probable damage to railway infrastructure facilities in certain territories. Using the example of snow avalanches and permafrost degradation due to climate change in the Russian Arctic, the possibilities of this type of assessment are demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reappraises nature of technology transfer in a colonial context by underlining how the colonised mediated and shaped what was ostensibly an imposition by the imperial administration. This wider point is illustrated by demonstrating the ways in which in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, different groups of Indians used newly introduced railways to reconceptualise meanings of travel by adding new categories of travel while significantly modifying the extant ones. Crucially deviating from both 'technology as imperialism' and 'technology as subversion' historiographical paradigms, this article argues for a more nuanced appraisal of technology transfer, especially emphasising the role of users in shaping the impact of technology. Examining a diverse range of sources, viz., railway records (Annual Railway Reports and railway passenger statistics), newspaper reports and travelogues and pamphlets written by Indian railway travellers, the article claims Indians not only mediated the impact of trains on travel in late colonial India; but they shaped the outcome of this technology transfer in ways that reveals agency and remarkable involvement with a new mode of transit. In short, the article demonstrates dynamic interaction between imperial policies and responses of the colonised through the lens of technology transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimating line impedance is relevant in transmission and distribution networks, in particular for planning and control. The large number of deployed PMUs has fostered the use of passive indirect methods based on network model identification. Electrified railways are a particular example of a distribution network, with moving highly dynamic loads, that would benefit from line impedance information for energy efficiency and optimization purposes, but for which many of the methods used in industrial applications cannot be directly applied. The estimate is carried out onboard using a passive method in a single-point perspective, suitable for implementation with energy metering onboard equipment. A comparison of two methods is carried out based on the non-linear least mean squares (LMS) optimization of an over-determined system of equations and on the auto- and cross-spectra of the pantograph voltage and current. The methods are checked preliminarily with a simulated synthetic network, showing good accuracy, within 5%. They are then applied to measured data over a 20 min run over the Swiss  16.7  Hz railway network. Both methods are suitable to track network impedance in real time during the train journey; but with suitable checks on the significance of the pantograph current and on the values of the coefficient of determination, the LMS method seems more reliable with predictable behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historian Raul Hilberg once observed of death trains: "It's just very regular traffic. Death traffic". Though subtle, his insinuation that this death traffic represented a "new normal" is, in fact, an astute observation of a largely unresearched process whereby Polish railway workers, and locals living near railway tracks, became witnesses to the Holocaust through observing the distinctive new "traffic" flowing by their spaces of home and work. In this case study, therefore, I examine these "death traffic witnesses" to reveal how their experiences highlight a critical reality about genocide in our modern world – its ability to transform relatively banal spaces (in peacetime) into horrific ones when employed for sinister purposes. In this case, those banal spaces are the railways that cut through our modern landscapes as symbols of connection, commerce and transport; their steel rails cutting through backyards and city centres linking even remote villages with major metropolises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demonstration of compliance of rolling stock against disturbance limits for railway signaling, and in particular track circuits, is subject to a large deal of variability, caused by the diverse values of the electrical parameters of the railway line and resulting transfer functions, as well as the operating conditions of the rolling stock during tests. Instrumental uncertainty is evaluated with a type B approach and shown to be much less than the experimental variability. Repeated test runs in acceleration, coasting, cruising, and braking conditions are considered, deriving both max-hold (spread) and sample (or experimental) standard deviation curves compared to the respective mean values (type A approach to the evaluation of uncertainty, as defined in of the Guide to the Uncertainty in Measurement. The major source of variability affecting a significant portion of the spectrum is caused by the superposed oscillations of the onboard LC filter, for which different choices of the transformation window duration are discussed. The test runs and the acquired data covered, overall, 1 day of tests along about 300 km of the Italian 3 kV DC railway network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until the 18th century, human history used a technology that had been going on for thousands of years and was characterised by its mechanical features, and social life was shaped accordingly. This process, which has been going on for thousands of years, witnessed significant changes in the 19th century, especially in transport technologies - railways and steamships - and this century witnessed the birth of today's modern technology. This process, which started in the field of transport, continued to gain momentum with developments in the fields of chemistry and electricity. In the 19th century, a period of rapid change and transformation, Ottoman society, as a technology importer, imported this technology from abroad. The product range and volume of the technology imported from abroad varied according to the years and the needs of the society. At this point, our research will try to examine how and in what way the Ottoman Empire, as a technology importer, used the imported technology by selecting samples from different neighbourhoods of Anatolia. As it is known, railways and steamships are among the most important technologies imported from the early period. Firstly, the use and effects of these transport technologies in the late Ottoman society will be investigated, and then the use and spread of agricultural tools such as threshing machines and ploughs will be emphasised depending on the developments in the agricultural field. Then we will focus on sewing machines, which had a significant impact on household production and became visible in the second half of the 19th century. Our research will try to investigate the use of technology in the late Ottoman society through such examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel method is proposed for rail fastener detection based on millimetre‐wave (mmWave) radar, mmWave radar fastener counter (MMW‐FC), which can accurately detect and record the fasteners in real‐time as the train traverses its route. Under circumstances where GNSS signals remain unavailable for prolonged durations, precise train localisation can be accomplished by correlating the number of fasteners derived from this method with the corresponding track map. Initially, MMW‐FC utilises fast Fourier transform and adaptive beamforming to focus the energy reflected from fasteners. Subsequently, it applies an adaptive template‐matching algorithm to detect each fastener. Furthermore, by leveraging known fastener spacing and the average time for trains to pass adjacent fasteners, the Kalman filter can execute precise speed tracking, used as a speed reference when adjusting the matching template adaptively. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method can precisely count the fasteners the train encounters in diverse road and speed conditions. The fastener counter maintains the Counting Error less than 0.067%, the speed error stays below 1.8 km/h, and the maximum values of the mean absolute error and root mean square error for speed are 0.7337 and 0.9584 km/h, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies indicate that expanding the length of roadways and railways has a beneficial effect on economic performance. Nevertheless, the requirement for land transport infrastructure, which offers different degrees of accessibility and mobility, to facilitate economic expansion differs based on a country's stage of development. The present study has two objectives. Firstly, it is essential to ascertain the required investment for different types of land transport infrastructure to facilitate different stages of economic performance. Secondly, the objective is to examine the impact of different forms of land transportation infrastructure on economic performance by means of urbanization and exports. To highlight these concerns, a fixed-effects panel linear regression analysis was conducted on a panel consisting of 50 countries spanning the years 1980–2018. In countries with lower levels of urbanization and exports, improvements to road infrastructure, especially roads with high accessibility, are of greater importance for economic performance compared to the improvement of railways. Nevertheless, as urbanization and exports rise, the comparative impact of improvements in road infrastructure on economic performance in relation to improvements in railway infrastructure diminishes. Railway improvements have a more significant effect on economic performance compared to road improvements, owing to increased urbanization and export rates. During these stages of development, high-mobility roads are more crucial for economic performance compared to high-accessibility roads. The conclusion of the research examined a variety of policy recommendations derived from our findings, which are applicable to different levels of urbanization and exports. • Evaluate the economic benefits of various land transportation infrastructure. • Assess the capital needed for various transport infrastructure to help the economy. • Low urbanization and export require high-access roads to boost economy. • High urbanization and export require railways to boost economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we analyse India's transport sector policy. The study examines the two important modes of transport, viz., road and rail, and analyses the efficiency of transport infrastructure from 2011 to 2019. Through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), we evaluate modes in terms of the capacity of registered road goods vehicles and railway goods wagons, truck km/train km and energy consumption and corresponding freight traffic. The analysis gives valuable insight into the fact that rail infrastructure is more efficient than road infrastructure. Still, current transport sector policies promote energy-intensive carbon-fuel road vehicles rather than energy-efficient alternative transport modes. The study suggests the changes that may be incorporated in inputs to improve the efficiency of the road infrastructure. The Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)-Malmquist Index analysis reports the need for total factor productivity improvement in rail transport and the introduction of technological innovations in road and rail transport sector management. The study employs a well-to-wheel (WTW) based index to ascertain the energy consumed and pollutants emitted by freight-carrying road and rail modes between two leading business hubs of India, i.e., Ludhiana and Mumbai. The paper identifies policy gaps and suggests a holistic approach for need-based roadway investment and a time-bound development of railway infrastructure in India. Our study generates valuable implications for India's policy planners and government authorities and provides new insights to other countries. • The study examines road and rail transport, and analyses the efficiency and energy consumption of these modes. • The study suggests the changes to improve the efficiency of the road infrastructure. • The Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)-Malmquist Index analysis and well-to-wheel (WTW) based index have been employed for the analysis. • The paper suggests a need-based roadway investment approach and a time-bound development of railway infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the development of the Polish railway network in the interwar period. The then Polish state, the Second Polish Republic, had to face two challenges in particular: Firstly, the railway network, built before World War I, had been constructed by the partitioning powers Russia, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary according to their own needs. Secondly, the network had sustained extensive damage as a result of combat actions during the war. Accordingly, the paper analyzes, on the one hand, how the decisive actors of the Second Polish Republic attempted to repair this damage to the railway network. On the other hand, their endeavors to adapt the railway network to the infrastructural demands of the new state are explored, with a focus on the construction of new railway lines. Starting with an overview of the development of the Polish railway network in the interwar period in both temporal and spatial regard, the paper proceeds with an in-depth analysis of selected case studies. To sum up, the study shows that while many new railway lines were built in the interwar period, an adaption of the railway network to the needs of the new state was achieved merely in part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on a hitherto untapped source of a subjective nature, which is on the borderline between private and institutionally requested provenance. Two manuscript memoirs of Emil Kellner, a long-time railway employee, can be found in the State Regional Archive in Prague within the fund of České dráhy, a. s., Prague [Czech Railways, JSC]. They were written in 1954 and 1955 at the instigation of the Railway Archive and the Ministry of Railways. They cover the period from the last third of the 19th century with gaps until 1941. The memoirs provide some interesting facts that were not previously known or, on the contrary, confirm some things already known. The memoirs give an insight into the (everyday), routine life on the railway. The characteristics of the employees and their fates, not excluding the social dimension, are extremely interesting. The memoirs also provide details of dealings with superiors (requests, personal presentations, interventions, patronage, visits to railway management in Vienna or Prague) and transcribed documents (correspondence) depicting railway administration during the monarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the contents of a recently discovered list detailing steam and diesel locomotives used in Poland from 1956 to 1970 on narrow-gauge railways of the State Forests. The document includes information such as the markings of individual locomotives, their manufacturers, production years, technical specifi cations, and operational history on specifi c forest railways. This information is presented in tabular format and supplemented with commentary on locomotive marking practices specifi c to forest railways, as well as a comprehensive literature review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Railway tracks, like all civil works, experience degradation after being put into service, thus losing their initial design conditions. This degradation manifests itself mainly through misalignment and specific deterioration mechanisms of each component, which reduces safety and comfort during the passage of trains. In order to maintain their operational capabilities or prolong their service life, continuous monitoring, diagnosis and maintenance processes are carried out. These actions aim to restore the physical, mechanical and geometrical properties necessary for track operation.In practice, rail managers often employ hegemonic techniques such as geometric measurements to detect defects and routine maintenance to realign, known as tamping. Although these practices have proven to be effective, in some cases they do not technically and economically competently solve the root problem. For this reason, diagnosis should be multidisciplinary and incorporate various disciplines associated with the track components.This paper aims to highlight the importance and impact of geotechnical diagnosis in the management of railway networks. To achieve this, the article has the following structure: (a) Railway track components: the main elements of the track are described and the role of geotechnical components in the stability of the infrastructure is highlighted, (b) Track degradation: The main deterioration of the track, such as loss of geometry, and its relation to the wear of the geotechnical elements are addressed, (c) Monitoring and monitoring: the most commonly used geotechnical inspection methods and their effectiveness in the analysis of granular material are presented, (d) Geotechnical diagnosis: Current maintenance management is analyzed and guidelines for a comprehensive diagnosis are suggested, highlighting cases where poor assessment has generated problems, (e) Maintenance techniques: Preservation methods are reviewed, stressing the importance of accurate diagnosis for their effectiveness, and (f) Future perspectives: Trends such as the use of artificial intelligence and advanced data management in the railway sector are explored.

Ballast behaviour has a profound impact on global track performance and durability, particularly for turnouts where dynamic forces are substantial. As ballast is a discontinuous material, this paper proposes the application of a Discrete Element Method (DEM) to model its behaviour under a conventional track turnout, a new approach that has not yet been tried for turnouts, only for main tracks. The model was validated with real vertical stiffness data measured in an actual turnout and used to analyse ballast behaviour under dynamic traffic loads. The results show remarkable differences in ballast behaviour for train speeds close to 180 km/h, as particle interactions and stress levels extend to the entire ballast layer. At lower speeds, the stress under the sleeper forms a trapezoidal shape for a given cross-section, while the rest of the layer remains barely affected. Overall, the DEM model is a reliable tool for simulating ballast behaviour and provides new insights into ballast-turnout interactions, which may help improve maintenance in these essential track elements.