  At present there are two trends in the market of rail freight transportation
in Russia: freight owners put forward higher demands to the transportation
quality (promptness of delivery) in an effort to reduce storage costs by means
of reducing the size of freight shipment; the structure of railcar traffic
volume of the railways of Russia is getting more complex due to the reduction
of the average shipment size and due to the transfer of railcar fleet ownership
to a large number of operating companies. These trends significantly complicate
operational management supervision of railway stations and transport nodes.
Application of typical data from the information system about the railcar
location at the transportation node is not enough for the dispatchers to make
the best decision concerning the car traffic management. The article is
concerned with the description and development of the mathematical model of
empty railcar distribution for loading at the railway transport node; this
model will take into account the requirements of railcar owners in terms of
their cars application, the operating work level of railroad stations of the
transportation node and the possibility of adding the groups of empty railcars
to the transfer trains, clean-up trains and industrial railway trains operating
on a tight schedule. The developed model and the software package were
implemented in the information system of the industrial railway of the major
metallurgical enterprise - OJSC "Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Works", which
processes up to two thousand of railcars belonging to different owners. This
model made it possible to reduce the labour intensity of dispatcher operation
planning the empty railcar distribution for loading and reduce the total time
the railcars spend in the enterprise railway system.
