Proposal of operational concept for bulk substrates transport by freight trains and its application within case study of aggregate transport for construction of Vlachovice dam

Abstract

Railway freight transport represents an advantageous way for regular transport of bulk substrates. As a result of changes within the industry and energy sectors as well as in the field of consumer behaviour, such business cases decline significantly. Nevertheless, transport such of the characteristic have being (and will be) still realized however, in addition, quantities of transported goods will be known in advance – as a part of major construction or environmental remediation projects.
In the period of 2020–2021, the Department of Transporting Systems in the CTU in Prague, Faculty of Transportation Sciences prepared the study “Vlára, Vlachovice Hydraulic Structure, Logistic Study of Material Transport for the Dam Construction” for the state enterprise Povodí Moravy (the Morava River Basin). Among other things, the study dealt with transport of more than 2.5 million tonnes from two quarries to the construction site of the Vlachovice dam by goods trains (the Vlachovice dam will be built in Moravia – the eastern part of the Czech Republic). It was necessary to determine an optimal route of the goods trains, their parameters and general operating concept so that the transport costs would be minimised and, concurrently, the transport performance would be as high as possible.
This paper sets itself a goal to present a general procedure and principles for proposal of freight trains for a business case characterized by long-term and regular transport of large quantities of goods. For the stated case study, transport technology in the railway station Bohuslavice nad Vláří is discussed in detail.