Increasing the theoretical and practical capacity of the Eastern Operating Domain by means of advanced train separation systems

Aim. Currently, the mainline railway network does not fully meet the market’s needs in terms of capacity, which is why every day JSC RZD is forced to reject 2 to 4% of applications for the transportation of goods across routes passing through limited-capacity railway infrastructure facilities. Increasing the practical capacity of railway lines by building additional tracks at stations and on open lines is unacceptably long and requires massive capital investments. Methods. It is proposed to solve the above problem by increasing the utilization of railway infrastructure by reducing the succession times and station operation times in the traffic schedule by deploying moving block and virtual coupling. This approach allows reducing capital investments up to 32 times and the duration of project implementation up to 8 times with a comparable capacity increase. The paper details the functionality of train separation technology and its technical parameters. Conclusion. The train separation technology has been deployed and is in operation on the Far Eastern, Trans-Baikal, East Siberian, and Krasnoyarsk Railways, branches of JSC RZD, that are part of the Eastern Operating Domain of JSC RZD network. By the end of 2023, the total length of track covered by the train separation solution was 5,734 km . Conclusion. In 2023, the lines of the Eastern Operating Domain handled almost 36 thousand pairs of trains with reduced spacing. The train separation technology also allows improving the safety and the level of digitalisation of the transportation process.