Railway Transportation Systems: Design, Construction and Operation

Incorporates More Than 25 Years of Research and Experience

Railway Transportation Systems: Design, Construction and Operation presents a comprehensive overview of railway passenger and freight transport systems, from design through to construction and operation. It covers the range of railway passenger systems, from conventional and high speed inter-urban systems through to suburban, regional and urban ones. Moreover, it thoroughly covers freight railway systems transporting conventional loads, heavy loads and dangerous goods. For each system it provides a definition, a brief overview of its evolution and examples of good practice, the main design, construction and operational characteristics, the preconditions for its selection, and the steps required to check the feasibility of its implementation.

The book also provides a general overview of issues related to safety, interface with the environment, cutting-edge technologies, and finally the techniques that govern the stability and guidance of railway vehicles on track.

• Contains information on the three main constituents of all railway systems: railway infrastructure, rolling stock, railway operations
• Provides a methodology for testing the applicability of the implementation of railway systems
• Offers an overview of issues related to the safety of railway systems in general
• Describes their interfaces with the environment, the cutting-edge technologies that are already in place as well as those that are under research, and the techniques that govern the stability and guidance of railway vehicles on track

Railway Transportation Systems: Design, Construction and Operation suits students, and also those in the industry ‒ engineers, consultants, manufacturers, transport company executives ‒ who need some breadth of knowledge to guide them over the course of their careers.

Christos N. Pyrgidis is a professor in railway engineering for the civil engineering department at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh), Greece. He earned a diploma in civil engineering (AUTh, 1981). In addition, he specialized for five years at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (ENPC) Paris, France, in transportation infrastructure (1984-1985: CES ’Infrastructure et Transports’); transport economics (1985-1986: DEA ’transport’) and railway engineering (1986-1989: PhD in ’transport’). From 2004 to 2007 he was the Greek representative to the Administrative Board of the European Railway Agency (ERA). Pyrgidis is a member of the ERRAC Academia Permanent Advisory Group and member of the Scientific Committee of SHIFT2RAIL Joint Undertaking (S2R JU). He has published more than 100 articles in scientific journals and international congresses. He is the author of another book, which is entitled Railway Transportation Systems: Infrastructure, Rolling Stock, Exploitation (in Greek).