Amid the growing need for more sustainable freight transport, the rail sector faces challenges in competing with road transport due to lower flexibility and reliability. To address these challenges, intermodal rail freight systems must evolve to enhance flexibility and integrate more seamlessly with broader mobility services. A key factor in the success of such innovations is the integration with existing railway infrastructure. This study examines the concept of modular vehicles (MVs) in rail systems, focusing on the innovative 'Pod' system developed in the Pods4Rail project. These Pods consist of detachable flat wagons (carriers) and capsules or containers (transport units) capable of moving both goods and passengers. A fundamental requirement for MVs is the assignment of carriers to transport units, allowing them to operate on the rail network. This involves , ensuring the availability of carriers at pickup points in terms of assignments of carriers to transport units as well as relocating empty carriers across the network. This may lead to empty runs and potential capacity challenges. Once assigned, complete Pod formation (combinations of carriers and transport units) form swarms or platoons through virtual coupling, which could significantly improve capacity utilization. This paper presents a heuristic framework that incorporates the assignment of carriers to transport units, and pod dispatching for pickup and delivery, including empty carrier circulation, considering parameters for the operation in virtual coupling. Results indicate that platooning reduces makespan for larger problem sizes, but requires a sufficient number of carriers.

Under the pressing need for increasing sustainability of freight transport, the rail sector faces challenges in competing with its road counterpart which can be contributed to lower flexibility and reliability. To overcome these challenges, intermodal rail freight systems should undergo a transformative evolution to enhance flexibility and seamlessly integrate with broader mobility services. Crucial to the success of any such innovative solution is integration with the existing railway infrastructure. This study explores the concept of modular vehicles (MV s) in rail systems, focusing particularly on the innovative 'Pod' system introduced in the Pods4Rail project. It introduces a framework for Pods scheduling on the railway network, incorporating an overlap-level-based platooning. Experiments show that implementing this system can significantly reduce the makespan and optimize railway capacity utilization, especially when dealing with larger problem sizes.