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We present an approach to implement an auction of railway slots. Railway network, train driving characteristics, and safety requirements are described by a simplified, but still complex macroscopic model. In this environment, slots are modelled as combinations of scheduled track segments. The auction design builds on the iterative combinatorial auction. However, combinatorial bids are restricted to some types of slot bundles that realize positive synergies between slots. We present a bidding language that allows bidding for these slot bundles. An integer programming approach is proposed to solve the winner determination problem of our auction. Computational results for auction simulations in the Hannover-Fulda-Kassel area of the German railway network give evidence that auction approaches can induce a more efficient use of railway capacity.
We present a graph theoretical model for scheduling trains on a single unidirectional track between two stations. The set of departures of all possible train types at all possible (discrete) points of time is turned into an undirected graph $\Gneu$ by joining two nodes if the corresponding departures are in conflict. This graph $\Gneu$ has no odd antiholes and no $k$-holes for any integer $k\geq 5$. In particular, any finite, node induced subgraph of $\Gneu$ is perfect. For any integer $r\geq 2$ we construct minimal headways for $r$ train types so that the resulting graph $\Gneu$ has $2r$-antiholes and $4$-holes at the same time. Hence, $\Gneu$ is neither a chordal graph nor the complement of a chordal graph, in general. At the end we analyse the maximal cliques in $G$.