Capacity at Railway Stations

Stations do have other challenges regarding capacity than open lines as it is here the traffic is dispatched. The UIC 406 capacity method that can be used to analyse the capacity consumption can be exposed in different ways at stations which may lead to different results. Therefore, stations need special focus when conducting UIC 406 capacity analyses.This paper describes how the UIC 406 capacity method can be expounded for stations. Commonly for the analyses of the stations it is recommended to include the entire station including the switch zone(s) and all station tracks. By including the switch zone(s) the possible conflicts with other trains (also in the opposite direction) are taken into account leading to more trustworthy results. Although the UIC 406 methodology proposes that the railway network should be divided into line sections when trains turn around and when the train order is changed, this paper recommends that the railway lines are not always be divided. In case trains turn around on open (single track) line, the capacity consumption may be too low if a railway line is divided. The same can be the case if only few trains are overtaken at an overtaking station. For dead end stations and overtaking stations, the dwell/layover time is recommended to be reduced to the minimum required time as it results in the lowest possible capacity consumption. For dead end stations it is furthermore recommended that the trains can use all possible tracks and not only those tracks they originally was assigned. For complex stations with shunting movement, the results of UIC 406 capacity analyses are imprecise due to different possible routes and no exact knowledge of shunting movements. For these stations it is instead recommended that they are analysed with a supplement to compensate for the inaccuracies.