A Computational Approach to Overtaking Station Track Layout Design Using Graphs: An Extension That Supports Special Turnouts—An Improved Alternative Track Layout Proposal

Abstract

The author recently designed, developed and implemented in Maple a package based on the use of digraphs that analyses the connectivity of an overtaking station on a double-track line. It was used to propose an alternative track layout for this kind of station, with advantages over the track layouts usually adopted. However, that package could only deal with “standard” turnouts (but neither with crossings nor with “special” turnouts, such as “single slip turnouts” or “scissors crossings”). This new article presents an improved version of the package. It uses a trick consisting in including virtual vertices in the associated digraph that are dead ends. This way it is possible to include the “special” turnouts in the track layout. It makes it possible to evaluate different alternative track layouts, including “special” turnouts; and to finally find one track layout that has advantages over the standard one and over the one proposed in the previous article. Let us observe that the design of the track layout is key for the exploitation of the infrastructure. In fact, the Spanish infrastructure administrator is nowadays remodelling the track layout of some of its main railway stations, as well as other smaller facilities.