The increasing train traffic over railway networks stretches the demand for capacity of railway yards and rolling stock maintenance locations, which increasingly limits performance and further growth. Therefore, the scheduling of rolling stock maintenance and the choice regarding optimal locations to perform maintenance is increasingly complicated. This research introduces a Maintenance Scheduling and Location Choice Problem (MSLCP). It simultaneously determines maintenance locations and maintenance schedules of rolling stock, while considering the available capacity of maintenance locations. Solving the MSLCP using one large Mixed Integer Programming appears not to perform well enough. Therefore, to solve the MSLCP, an optimization framework based on Logic-Based Benders’ Decomposition (LBBD) is proposed by combining two models, the Maintenance Location Choice Problem (MLCP) and the Activity Planning Problem (APP), to assess the capacity of an MLCP solution. Within the LBBD, four variants of cut generation procedures are introduced to improve the computational performance: a naive procedure, two heuristic procedures and the so-called min-cut procedure that aims to exploit the specific characteristics of the problem at hand. The framework is demonstrated on realistic scenarios from the Dutch railways. It is shown that the best choice for the cut generation procedure depends on the objective: when aiming to find a good but not necessarily optimal solution, the min-cut procedure performs best, whereas when aiming for the optimal solution, one of the heuristic procedures is the preferred option. The techniques used in the current research are new to the current field and offer interesting next research opportunities. ... Read more

Due to increasing railway use, the capacity at railway yards and maintenance locations is becoming limiting to accommodate existing rolling stock. To reduce capacity issues at maintenance locations during nighttime, railway undertakings consider performing more daytime maintenance, but the choice at which locations personnel needs to be stationed for daytime maintenance is not straightforward. Among other things, it depends on the planned rolling stock circulation and the maintenance activities that need to be performed. This paper presents the Maintenance Location Choice Problem (MLCP) and provides a Mixed Integer Linear Programming model for this problem. The model demonstrates that for a representative rolling stock circulation from The Netherlands Railways a substantial amount of maintenance activities can be performed during daytime. Also, it is shown that the location choice delivered by the model is robust under various time horizons and rolling stock circulations. Moreover, the running time for optimizing the model is considered acceptable for planning purposes. ... Read more