Analysis and carrying capacity evaluation of terminal railway stations

The main objective of the paper is the analysis of a terminal railway station starting from the consideration that the management of trains and routes is a hard problem and tracks availability assumes a particular relevance because of the stop time required to allow the reversing movements, especially for not reversing trains. Therefore the present paper aims to give a contribution to the calculation of the carrying capacity by means of an integrated methodology based on topological and operational criteria. The analysis consists of three main steps corresponding to different parts of the general problem: layout simplification, routes reduction and capacity evaluation. The procedure has been applied to very large stations (Firenze Santa Maria Novella, Roma Termini). In addition to methodological approach the application experiences to a case of study are reported.