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Railway transport maintenance plays an important role in delivering safe, reliable and competitive transport services. An appropriate maintenance strategy not only reduces the assets’ lifecycle cost, but also will ensure high standards of safety and comfort for rail passengers and workers. In recent years, the majority of studies have been focused on the application of risk-based tools and techniques to maintenance decision making of railway infrastructure assets (such as tracks, bridges, etc.). The purpose of this paper is to present a risk-based modeling approach for the inspection and maintenance optimization of railway rolling stock components.

All the “potential failure modes and root causes” related to rolling stock systems are identified from an extensive literature review followed by an expert’s panel assessment. The failure causes are categorized into six groups of electrical faults, structural damages, functional failures, degradation, human errors and natural (external) hazards. Stochastic models are then proposed to estimate the likelihood (probability) of occurrence of a failure in the rolling stock system. The consequences of failures are also modeled by an “inflated cost function” that involves safety-related costs, corrective maintenance and renewal (M&R) costs, the penalty charges due to train delays or service interruptions as well as the costs associated with loss of reputation (or loss of fares) in the case of trip cancellation. Lastly, a time-varying risk-cost function is formulated to determine the optimal frequency of preventive inspection and maintenance actions for rolling stock components.

For the purpose of clearly illustrating the proposed risk-based inspection and maintenance modeling methodology, a case study of the Class 380 train’s pantograph system from a Scottish train operating company is provided. The results indicate that the proposed model has a substantial potential to reduce the M&R costs while ensuring a higher level of safety and service quality compared to the currently used inspection methodologies.

The railway rolling stocks should be regularly inspected and maintained so as to ensure network availability and reliability, passenger safety and comfort, and operations efficiency. Despite the best efforts of the maintenance staff, it is reported that a considerable amount of maintenance resources (e.g. budget, time, manpower) is wasted due to insufficiency or inefficiency of current periodic M&R interventions. The model presented in this paper helps the maintenance engineers to assess the current maintenance practices and propose or initiate improvement actions when needed.

There are few studies investigating the application of risk-based tools and techniques to inspection and maintenance decision making of railway rolling stock components. This paper presents a modeling approach aimed at planning the preventive repair and maintenance interventions for rolling stock components based on risk measures. The author’s model is also capable of incorporating real measurement information gathered at each inspection epoch to update future inspection plans.

Surface defects are often present on the surface of continuous casting slabs and rolled products. A lot of surface defects of hot rolled products are inherited from initial defects on continuous casting slabs. This work aims to trace the original surface defect during the whole heavy rail rolling and avoid black line surface defect that appears on the surface of heavy rail finial product.

Artificial round hole-shaped surface defects on the surface of continuous casting slab during the hot rolling of 60 kg/m heavy rail are analyzed experimentally and by means of explicit dynamic finite element method (FEM) and modified model rebuilding method.

The calculated results of surface defect locations of heavy rail finial product are in good agreement with the experimental ones. It is shown that the explicit dynamic FEM and modified model rebuilding method can be used effectively to predict the flow behavior of surface defects in the hot rolling of 60 kg/m heavy rail.

The three-dimensional finite element model for whole heavy rail rolling is built using explicit dynamic code and modified model rebuilding method. Flow behavior of black lines is studied in the 60-kg/m heavy rail rolling. The simulation results of six typical points are in good agreement with the experimental results.

This chapter provides a taxonomy of key rolling stock types and covers the key engineering principles. This chapter concentrates on the aspects of the rolling stock that make it sustainable in terms of passenger transportation; these aspects are primarily safety and crashworthiness. These are specific items that contribute to make the rolling stock and hence rail system more sustainable; passengers need to be confident that they are travelling in safe rolling stock and the vehicle consist, manufacturing technique or materials used should not compromise the crashworthiness aspects. For this reason, all aspects of this chapter reference vehicle safety and crashworthiness.

The entire sector of railway transport is in a state of flux in Europe as deregulation and structural changes are affecting the traditional transport mode. Even though the aim has been to increase railway freight competition, markets have changed only slightly, and the market shares of incumbent railway companies are remaining high. Some EU countries have not attracted any new entrants, which is also the current situation in Finland. This paper aims to assess how the Finnish railway freight competition develops and to analyze different views on railway transport policy.

This research work analyses a Delphi questionnaire directed at 52 Finnish experts in this branch. Responses on the questionnaire were gathered during year 2005 (competition in Finland in railway freight started 2007) within two rounds with appropriate amount of response rate. Respondents were from the public and private sectors, actors working closely with railway transports and logistics. With an expert profiling matrix, three different railway transport policy viewpoint groups are identified, and character descriptions for these are constructed.

Based on a qualitative expert profiling analysis, it is argued that there exist three different argument types in Finnish railway transport policy. The authors have constructed character descriptions for each group based on material collected by the Delphi technique. They conclude that the policy definitions have followed the views of the moderate group and the realization of the deregulation process has been slow, even though a great amount of competition was expected.

The research work is limited to the Finnish railway freight transport market, where development of competition on rails has been sluggish. To further confirm the used methodology, and the identified railway freight competition policy group types, the research work should be repeated in some other country, and particularly in an environment where competition has shown activity immediately after deregulation.

The research represents methodology to foresee the future development of deregulated industries, and especially in the transportation sector. The paper's approach can be used to divide stakeholders into groups and to make policy analysis. The problem with to‐be‐deregulated industry is often lack of competition, new actors and governmental actions, and therefore the used Delphi technique offers potential to gather empirical material before any activity has actually started in the observed industry.

The purpose is to describe new business opportunities within the Swedish railway industry and to support the development of business models that corresponds with the needs and requirements of Industry 4.0, here denoted as Service Management 4.0.

The study is an in-depth and descriptive case study of the Swedish railway system with specific focus on a railway vehicle maintainer. Public reports, statistics, internal documents, interviews and dialogues forms the basis for the empirical findings.

The article describes the complex business environment of the deregulated Swedish railway industry. Main findings are in the form of identified business opportunities and new business model propositions for one of the key actors, a vehicle maintainer.

The article provides valuable understanding of business strategy development within complex business environments and how maintenance related business models could be developed for reaching Service Management 4.0.

The findings suggest that reducing information processing costs as a result of better transportation is an important ingredient in promoting the pricing of firm-specific information. This study aims to discuss the aforementioned issue.

The authors adopt a difference-in-difference (DID) research design to examine the impact of information processing costs on stock price synchronicity with a sample of firms listed in the Chinese A-share market during 2007 and 2017.

This paper shows that the launch of the high-speed railway (hereafter HSR) in China is associated with lower stock price synchronicity, consistent with the theory that the HSR reduces investors’ information processing costs (cost of monitoring, acquiring and analyzing firm disclosures). This effect is more pronounced for companies located in remote areas than for those located in large cities. Further tests show that the negative association between the launch of HSR and stock price synchronicity is stronger for companies with higher information asymmetries, proxied by higher equity concentration, higher complexity and lower internal control quality.

This study contributes to the literature in the following three ways. First, prior literature relates the effects of geographic distance to information transmission and information asymmetry between insiders and outside investors (e.g. Coval and Moskowitz, 2001; Kang and Kim, 2008; Malloy, 2005). The authors supplement the literature by providing new empirical evidence from an exogenous shock (natural experiment), that is, the launch of HSR, that facilitates transportation and reduces information transmission costs. Second, prior studies have shown that new airline routes that facilitate transportation improve investment and productivity (e.g. Bernstein et al., 2016; Giroud, 2013). The authors extend this stream of studies by showing that the development of HSR networks reduces information processing costs, and promotes the incorporation of firm-specific information in the asset pricing. More importantly, in this study, the authors explicitly incorporate disclosure processing costs theory into our framework thus enhancing our understanding of how and why improvements in transport relate to better market outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical conceptualization of how data envelopment analysis (DEA) can be applied to rail freight rolling stock in order to develop a tariff for track access charges which is functionally dependent upon the derived relative benchmark values of performance.

It is posited that track access charges should be differentiated to reflect differences in the performance of rolling stock and that this can be achieved purely on the basis of technical and other characteristics. The performance benchmarking of rolling stock is proposed as the basis for formulating and justifying a performance-based tariff structure. Using DEA, relative index measures of rolling stock performance can be derived, benchmark performance can be identified and a tariff structure can be developed.

A workable approach to implementing the concept, utilizing existing in-house databases, is found to be feasible and a template for tariff setting is established.

In the absence of access to in-house technical data on rolling stock, which is commercially sensitive, no empirical application of the concept is possible.

There are many ways to improve the efficiency of a railway system. Many are inherently long term and involve significant investment. Using Sweden as an example, this paper proposes the more immediate, simpler and cheaper approach of incentivising the use of better rolling stock through appropriate track access charging. Such an approach should reduce the number of problems arising on the rail network and the costs imposed on other rail users, the infrastructure providers and society. Ultimately, the implementation of this approach would support the objective of increasing long-term robustness and reducing disruptions to railways.

When a stock is added into the S&P 500 Index, it in effect becomes cross-listed in the Index derivative markets. When index-based trading strategies such as index arbitrage are executed, the component stocks are directly affected by such trading. We find increased volatility of daily returns, plus increased trading volume for the underlying stocks. Utilizing a list of S&P 500 Index composition changes over the period September 1976 to December 2005, we study the market-adjusted volume turnover and return variance of the stocks added to and deleted from the Index. The results indicate that after the introduction of the S&P 500 Index futures and options contracts, stocks added to the S&P 500 experience statistically significant increase in both trading volume and return volatility. Both daily and monthly return variances increase following index inclusion. When stocks are removed from the index, though, neither volatility of returns nor trading volume experiences any significant change. So, we have new evidence showing that Index inclusion changes a firm's return volatility, and supporting the destabilization hypothesis.

DRAUGHTSMEN can make a major contribution to productivity provided they are trained in work study. This fact emerged from a paper presented by Mr. B. A. Dyson, General Manager (Overseas Production) of Hoover Ltd., to a joint work study conference organised by the British Institute of Management.