A simple method for automatic recreation of railway horizontal alignments

Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of recreating horizontal alignments of existing railway lines. The main objective is to propose a simple method for automatically obtaining optimized recreated alignments located as close as possible to an existing one. Based on a previously defined geometric model, two different constrained optimization problems are formulated. The first problem uses only the information provided by a set of points representing the track centerline while the second one also considers additional data about the existing alignment. The proposed methodology consists of a two-stage process in which both problems are solved consecutively using numerical techniques. The main results obtained applying this methodology are presented to show its performance and to prove its practical usefulness: an academic example used to compare with other methods, and a case study of a railway section located in Parga (Spain) in which the geometry of its horizontal alignment is successfully recovered.