There is discussed current situation and problems of rail damageability in operation. It has been indicated that contact-fatigue defects coded as 10, 11, 17, 21 in the standing catalogue of rail defects represent the main type of rail defects responsible for over 50 % of the total number of cases of rail withdrawal from the track. There was studied character of emergence and development of the contact-fatigue rail defects at present day. Thus it was shown that surface layer destruction of the rail head metal affected by cyclic inelastic deformation (and not non-metallic impurities of steel or presence of brittle-fractured non-metallic inclusions, such as aluminum silicates or other multiple oxides) was mainly responsible for their emergence. Specification of main destruction stages of the rail head metal and investigation of various stage processes was carried out at the JSC VNIIZhT Experimental Loop through the example of the I Class rails T1 (GOST R 51685 - 2000). It was found that at various destruction stages of the rail head metal there take place: formation of the cold-worked layer with fibre-strained pearlite microstructure, reduced by a quarter instantaneous strength and four-times reduced percentage extension; flaw development and formation of small pittings with their further development into chippings with depth up to 4.0 mm; emergence of longitudinal flaws up to 6 - 10 mm in depth with their further turning and developing of lateral fatigue flaws. For investigated rails there was obtained passed tonnage dependence of the chipping depth. It is proposed to determine frequency and regimes of in-track preventive rail grinding not only on the basis of irregularities’ development rate but also on the basis of surface flaw/chipping deepening law in terms of increase in the passed tonnage under specified operating conditions. Also there is noted the necessity of special-purpose flaw-detection equipment creation intended to determine the depth of surface flaws.

There is considered about the problem of nonsteady random processes as related to rail vehicle oscillations under action of multidimentional random forcing process in the form of vertical and horizontal irregularities of the left and right rail lines. In terms of vehicle movement speed variations it is necessary to change the number and consist of summands in the analytical expression describing pulse-response characteristic of the shaping filter involved in the random process generation of the in-track equivalent geometric irregularity. There are obtained 3-D implementations of such random oscillation processes for the discussed rail vehicle model. Also it is shown that individual implementations of such processes are much different from each other which is evidence of unsteadiness of these oscillation processes. There are obtained 2-D distribution densities of random processes’ instantaneous values of the vehicle body, bogie and wheelset swaying oscillations, which can be smoothed out by the 2-D Gaussian law. Correlation functions and Fourier densities of these oscillations proved to be 3-D ones. At that Fourier density functions’ surface turns to be a nonnegative one with a number of maximums, which highest y-coordinates are located in the principal diagonal plane. There is justified the emergence of principal and side spectral density maximums and it is indicated that the frequencies corresponding to side maximums are in the ratios 2: 1 and 3: 1 with the respective diagonal maximum frequency. This is evidence of the presence of ultraharmonic constituents, characteristic to nonlinear systems, within the respective oscillation processes’ implementations. There is calculated distribution of the processes absolute maximums and are found average values of distributions, characterizing ability rating values.

At present time most rolling stock failures on domestic railway transport are induced by the absence of adequate diagnostics of the equipment technical condition. Record of operating indices is a manual one, representing extracts from standard reports of locomotive service. Meanwhile annual losses due to degradation of cooling equipment performance can amount to 6 - 7 t of diesel fuel per diesel locomotive unit. The paper contains review and analysis (covering inter alia advantages and disadvantages) of the known objective and subjective techniques to determinate quantitative constituent of reduction in the cooling system operating efficiency. There is drawn conclusion that the existing techniques are appropriate in identifying diesel locomotives with cooling equipment technical condition much inferior to the permitted one. Otherwise diagnostic measures’ labour input becomes unreasonably high. So in the absence of reliable on-line monitoring tools the development of special-purpose on-line techniques and tools for heat-dissipating capacity diagnostics of diesel locomotive cooling equipment is needed, considering diesel engine intermittent operation with a large proportion of transient phenomena. There are presented guidelines for the development of integrated determination technique of heat-dissipating capacity residue employing available up-to-date means for on-line remote diagnostics of the diesel locomotive principal operating parameters. Maintaining the required heat-dissipating capacity level of the diesel locomotive cooling equipment in operation will contribute to notable reduction in unproductive operating costs.

Existing testing and preventive maintenance pattern is meant for the equipment which actual term of service does not exceed the maximum allowable one. As a result traction substations’ fault rate increases year on year. One reason for this proves to be ageing of equipment, which is supported with statistical data obtained from the data bases of Automated Power Supply Control System (ASUE) and Comprehensive Automated System for Record Keeping and Fault Elimination Monitoring of the JSC RZD Technical Facilities and Analysis of Their Reliability (KASANT). Today optimization of preventive maintenance pattern is a rather important task. It is a challenging task so far as the existing diagnostic techniques do not deliver complete information on the equipment reliability and it is necessary to find optimum maintenance strategy in terms of incomplete system condition data. The paper tackles the selection problem of optimum preventive maintenance pattern of traction substation equipment making allowance for its ageing. It is also indicated that the system states describing process is a regenerating one. That’s why average unit losses in terms of unlimited (“endless”) system service life can be defined by the ratio between the average losses over the inter-maintenance period and the length of this period. There is described algorithm for optimum schedule formation of the equipment preventive maintenance. Approximate solution of the problem in terms of unlimited service life of the system can be obtained through use of the reliability mapping based URRAN procedure developed by the JSC NIIAS (Research & Design Institute for Information Technology, Signalling and Telecommunications on Railway Transport).

Transport proves to be one of the most important industries intended to ensure dynamic development of the national economy. Evolution of railway transport in the modern trends context of economic development on national and world basis needs to be supported with innovation theory researches now regarded among the most useful for the railway industry. Innovation management challenges (and in particular methodological and definitions issues) as applied to railway transport come into key importance. Analysis of various enucleation approaches to innovations has shown that innovation object may be considered about and studied in different ways depending on the selected criteria. The studies make emphasis on the innovation classi-fication problem. The present paper proposes innovations classification in the area of railway transport. This classification version is based on the universal categories and links. It specifies and systematizes definitions, links up various sort innovations, inventions and novations and spins off into a separate category innovations corresponding to modern trends in the scientific and technical development. Application of the newly developed classification allowed for tangible explication and development of the multifunctional innovation classificatory, linking up the rates of innovation and investment activities, which is most significantly at the moment when the task of coping with economic ‘turbulence’/stagnation and obtaining the correct path of dynamic economic growth becomes imperative. Such a classificatory clarifies the dependence between innovations and investments in the macroeconomic environment and can be employed to justify stepping up the JSC RZD innovation and investment strategy.

The paper contains classification of passenger traffic flows with various levels of detail, covering those between the constituents of the Russian Federation (inclusive of specification by passenger car types) and between individual stations. Partition into classes was carried out employing ABC analysis. The authors give a description of the class extraction method and unpack it in the prac-tical context of railway passenger services. There is described methodological basis of the performed classification and passenger traffic volume calculations. Also presented is the classification algorithm developed within the framework of the discussed study. There is analyzed the structure of the extracted passenger flow classes for each level of detail. There are also compared traffic volumes shares of individual classes and numbers of passenger flow streams in these classes. Justification is presented of existing trends stable character as related to passenger flows partition into classes with use of historical data.

For obtaining precise enough values of the required probabilistic characteristics it is necessary to carry out a large number of full-scale experiments demanding for considerable expenditures (especially in the case of ballastless track examination). For the purpose of the testing scope reduction it is necessary to define the common use concept of mathematic modelling and limited number of full-scale tests. It is supposed possible to obtain satisfactory model of a system as a whole and put to full-scale test limited number of ballastless track structure elements. Theoretical researches may help to find probabilistic characteristics’ statistical values of the system model. And probabilistic characteristics of the simplified system model may be obtained from the analysis. As a rule the two types of the system model characteristics are available independently of each other to be used for the purpose of indirect mutual proof of their correctness only.

Monitoring of rail fastenings technical condition is necessary while trying to mitigate vehicle - track dynamic interaction as well as to reduce bedding course disconsolidation, to identify defects in the initial stage and to ensure safety of railway track opera-tion. The paper tackles the in-track identification aspect of deformed and worn out fastening elements. Identification technique is based upon comparison of structural deformations in terms of track structure loaded and unloaded conditions. Based upon thus obtained data there are discussed determination aspects of the fastenings’ structural strength dependence on their actual condition. Series of laboratory studies was conducted to identify fastening deformability dependence on the clip bolts torque values. Through the example of rail fastening ZhBR-65 inference should be drawn on the possibility to measure sleeper relative rail sinking for the purpose of in-track localization of the fastenings’ troublemaking elements with reference to 100 meter marks.

The JSC VNIIZhT experts are engaged in introduction process of hardware-software complex (HSC) ELBRUS intended for automated production of living train diagrams for railway domains. While preparing tight run profiles numbers of trains which will adhere to the schedules of this train diagram are not uniquely determined beforehand. To make possible use of the same train paths by various type trains several numbers are assigned to each train one of which is basic and others - fractional. One of the most significant modules of the HSC ELBRUS mathematical model implements recording function of fractional numbers in the train diagram. The paper describes in detail basic development principles of this module’s operating procedures in the mathematical model HSC ELBRUS environment.