As a result of the reorientation of freight flows to the east and south, the problem of insufficient throughput capacity arose on the Eastern range of Russian railways. In addition, a number of eastern ports and border crossings have a problem of low technical equipment. These facts indicate that at the moment the country’s transport system is not able to fully cope with the increased volume of cargo transportation, as a result of which the management of the Russian Railways company and the Government of the Russian Federation are introducing restrictions on the transportation of certain categories of cargo, as well as the priority of one cargo over another.
For a long time, coal occupied the leading position in terms of transportation volumes, but now consumer goods are coming to the fore to meet the needs of the population. The coal sector, as well as related sectors of the economy, suffered large financial losses: mining enterprises limited daily loading volumes due to untimely removal of cargo, as a result of which all participants in the transportation process suffered – clients, transport companies, rolling stock operators, Russian Railways, port terminals and coal mining enterprises.
The purpose of this study was to compare the economic costs of shippers when transporting along established delivery routes, as well as along the direction that is rapidly developing today – along the Northern Sea Route.
To achieve this goal, it is necessary to analyze the relevance of transportation of hard coal to China, calculate the economic costs of delivering cargo according to the traditional and multi-modal scheme through the Northern Sea Route, and based on the calculation, draw a conclusion about the feasibility of transportation using a new technology for the shipper.
As a result of the study, it was established that transportation of coal using the “railway – river – sea” scheme via the Northern Sea Route is currently not attractive for the shipper compared to traditional routes due to the large over-payment (2.6 times).

Seamless rail lashes are the main element of a typical seamless railway track construction. The discharge of thermal stresses in seamless lashes is one of the most common and labour-intensive operations in the track facilities of Russian Railways.
Currently, two main types of technological processes are known, using: hydraulic tension device (GNU); GNU and heating units (removable heating units that have recently begun to be used).
Four main paired options for the technology of discharging thermal stresses of rail lashes were identified for further technical and economic analysis of the results for a number of technological and economic indicators: with the use of HPU (KB-65, JBR-65); GNU (JBR-65SH, JBR-65PSHM, JBR-65PSHR); GNU and heating units (KB-65, JBR-65); GNU and heating units (JBR-65SH, JBR-65PSHM, JBR-65PSHR). A methodology has been developed for determining and evaluating the technical and economic indicators of technologies, taking into account a number of factors: labour costs for employees, fuel costs, annual equipment maintenance costs, average costs for providing “windows”.
The introduction of heating units into the technology of discharging thermal stresses in seamless lashes has a high technological efficiency than existing technologies, so the reduction in the “window” time was up to 16.7 %, and the reduction in labour costs was up to 4 %, and the amount of payment is also reduced labour and the average cost of holding a “window”. The reduction in the total economic costs of the technology for discharging thermal stresses of seamless lashes due to the introduction of heating units is up to 42 %, and in the future these technologies can successfully replace similar technologies currently existing in the track facilities of Russian Railways.

The most common designs of breakwaters used for engineering protection of the roadbed are considered. Breakwaters are designed to dampen wave energy and retain sediments forming a wave-quenching beach. The purpose of the work is to develop criteria for the technical condition of breakwater elements by types of defects. The main research methods were a full-scale survey of structures and physical modeling in hydrowave pools and a tray. A survey of breakwaters on the section of the Tuapse – Adler railway line of the North Caucasus Railway (NCR) was carried out in order to determine defects in both structures as a whole and their elements. Experimental studies of the interaction of waves with breakwaters and the beach were carried out on models in wave pools and a tray. According to the research results, the division of breakwaters into separate elements according to their degree of weight is proposed. Criteria for the technical condition of each element of the breakwater by types of defects are obtained. An algorithm for assessing the technical condition of breakwaters and determining the necessary measures to ensure the operability of structures has been developed.
The proposed algorithm for assessing the technical condition of breakwaters will allow to assess their technical condition and thus improve the safety of the operation of the railway track on the pressure sea sections. The obtained criteria for assessing the technical condition of breakwaters are taken into account in the development of GOST R 59241-2020 “Coastal protection structures. Rules of inspection and monitoring of technical condition”.

Transportation of goods in containers largely reflects the essence of the current stage of development of container transportation as a segment of the railway transport market. In order to assess the directions of its regional development for the future, the existing situation in the sphere of container transportation, which has developed in the zone of influence of the West Siberian Railway, was considered as an information and analytical basis of the base.
The article presents the results of accounting and analytical activities in relation to the types of shipped goods and destination stations. In order to understand the links between the commodity flows of goods in containers and the development of supplies, the types of goods, as well as the types of industries, the products of which were these items of transport work, were taken into account. As part of the comprehensive analysis, the consignees – internal and external – were taken into account.
The purpose of this study was to analyze the species diversity of cargo shipped in containers and the location of consignees. This makes it possible to determine the role and place of the railway in the internal and external commodity transport markets.
It was found that in domestic container shipments, the largest share (36.89 %) falls on chemical complex cargoes, the list of which amounted to almost a dozen and a half units. Container cargoes of the agro-industrial complex also showed a high share (20.83 %), the list of which is also approaching the top ten. 25 railways were the recipients of cargo in containers. Chemical complex cargoes also showed the largest share (35.5 %) in external shipments. The share of goods produced at the enterprises of the agricultural and industrial complex amounted to 23.3 %. The forest complex closes the top three, whose products – lumber – accounted for 23.3 % of the total volume of goods sent for export. The 49 countries of the world were recipients of cargo in containers.
The article presents the methodology of accounting and analysis of container shipments, tested in the region at the landfill of the West Siberian Railway.

The article analyzes some directions for the development of railway transport in Russia until 2030. Some of the main problems in the maintenance of continuously welded rail track are considered. Issues of maintenance methods for continuously welded rail track taking into account the impact of trains remain relevant today, so it is necessary to pay attention to research in this area and adjust existing methods, which currently only partially take into account the peculiarities of the temperature operation of continuously welded rail track.
The article provides an overview of existing theories of track hijacking, but attention is paid to the mechanism of the continuously welded rail track specific elastic longitudinal deformations, which occur when a locomotive passes in braking mode.
Calculations of longitudinal forces in continuously welded rail track and their elastic movements within the wheelbase of the ES10 series electric locomotives running in regenerative braking mode under various operating conditions were performed. Such longitudinal forces, which additionally arise during braking, affect the fastening intervals of the continuously welded rail track strands and the stability of the rail and sleeper grid as a whole.
Proposals are given for adjusting the calculated temperature range for fixing rail strands to a constant operating mode by comparing the compressive longitudinal forces from an increase in the rails temperature and the longitudinal forces transmitted to the rail strands during regenerative braking of the electric locomotive. It has been established that, under the conditions considered in the article, the need to strengthen the structure of the superstructure of the track arises earlier than provided for by the Instructions for the design, laying, maintenance and repair of continuously welded rail track.

The development of multimodal transport hubs is of great importance for the Russian transport complex. By forming a coordinated transport network and strengthening the integration of various modes of transport, they contribute to increased mobility and increase the overall efficiency of transport enterprises. The main trends in the market of transport and logistics services indicate the need to form a backbone network of transport hubs, in particular in the Far Eastern region. At the same time, with the undeniable importance of transport, the insufficiency of transport infrastructure is a limiting condition for the economic development of the Russian Far East. The study carried out by the authors showed that taking into account the identified sources of synergy of multimodal transport hubs will increase the efficiency of transport enterprises, taking into account territorial characteristics.
The article examines the main transport hubs of federal importance with zones of influence, presents the dynamics of cargo transportation for 2018-2023 looking forward to 2035. Among the main trends in the development of the market, it is possible to highlight an increase in the range of transportation, an increase in the role of motor transport in the transportation of goods, an increase in the turnover of ports, in particular in the Far Eastern region, and an increase in tariffs for cargo transportation. The main drivers of the growth of the transport and logistics services market are highlighted and the risks of its development are identified. The presence of one transport hub of federal importance on the territory of the Russian Far East in conditions of a shortage of transport infrastructure reduces the ability of transport enterprises to effectively develop increased traffic flows.
The purpose of this study was to identify the synergy sources of multimodal transport hubs in the Russian Far East.
It is established that the development of transport infrastructure in order to form multimodal transport hubs at the intersection of the path of transport corridors and territories of advanced development will allow for the synergy effect of transport enterprises and nearby territories.

Large seaports are located within urban settlements and they are territorially limited in their development. In the process of their development, both coastal cities and ports create infrastructural problems. Currently, this is expressed in the lack of additional territories for terminals, in the insufficient development of intraport road and railway access roads, as well as port stations. The current situation limits capacity in sea and river ports. The solution of the problems of coordination in the functioning of sea and land modes of transport is seen in the use of logistics technologies and principles of managing transport processes and systems in a new organizational form. This form is a dry port – that is, a terminal located outside the territory of a seaport.
Despite the relatively short period of its existence, dry ports already have their own history. At first, these were small-sized territorial production formations located near seaports. Then dry ports began to be located in more remote areas. Transport and economic (freight) links with them, through water and road transport, ensure the effectiveness of logistics services in international trade.
The article examines the problems of organization, operation and development of dry ports, and clarifies the definition of the concept and function of a dry port. The concept of a dry port with the functions of a transport logistics center for transshipment of sea cargo on domestic routes is considered. The prerequisites for the development of a dry port in the system of transport corridors, with the participation of Siberian rivers and the Northern Sea Route, have been established.

In recent years, there has been an active redirection of the bulk of cargo-and wagon flows originating in the economic space of Russia to the countries of the Asian and African continents. The specified transport and logistics «turn» is of a strategic nature and, apparently, will be long-lasting. There is no doubt that the ongoing changes help to increase the level of relevance of relevant transport and logistics research. The importance of approaches and methods, the development of which is based on new mathematically justified logistics ideas, is increasing. The previously proposed approaches do not lose their significance, subject to their development, modification and adaptation to the ongoing economic and geographical changes occurring in relation to the transportation process as a whole. At the same time, practically significant, first of all, are the results of research, which represent theoretically substantiated transport and logistics schemes of a general nature, the implementation of which makes it possible to activate the mechanism of market functioning (concerning this paper, this is, first of all, the market for operating wagons). Drawing attention to the multimodality of the vast majority of economically significant freight transportation, we note that due to the very design of the modern transportation process, the objects that are especially in demand in conducting the above researches are port-side transport and technological systems.
The purpose of this research is to develop a mathematically sound and practical approach to transport and logistics modeling of the process of regulating wagon flows at a railway loop. The theoretical basis is a modification of the economic-geographical delimitation method of the «influence areas» of transportation process subjects developed by the authors previously. The main component of the new model is the coefficient of road non-straightness, introduced for the considered railway stations for the departure of wagons. The specified coefficient makes it possible to take into account the specific location of the transport network in relation to possible destination stations.
The result of the research is a geometric routing model of the territorial oligopolistic market for services for the transportation of empty wagons, formed by the departure stations under consideration. The model is implemented in the environment of the computer mathematics system Maxima (Free Ware).

The transportation of containers in gondola cars using terminal technology from East to West with overloading at the training grounds of the West Siberian, Sverdlovsk and South Ural railways in 2023 amounted to about 18–25 thousand TEU per month. A new technology was born on the railway network – the railway transshipment. This technology allows you to combine the transportation of containers in open wagons in one section of the route and transportation on fitting platforms on another. An increase in the volume of sending containers from stations in the Far East can reach 25 trains per day with containers in gondola cars, which is four times more than the existing volumes. The proposed technology is a solution for eliminating the imbalance in container flow to seaports and unloading the Eastern landfill. At the same time, it should be stated at present that the technology is not configured to the parameters of shippers, consignees and other market participants in such transportation that meet the requirements. One of the areas of technology improvement is the development of new or improvement of existing devices for fastening containers in open wagons. Decisions made on the railway network require additional time for operations to place containers and fastening props in the gondola car. The work done to find solutions at present has not led to the emergence of fastening devices that satisfy most of the requirements of transportation participants. The article summarizes the experience of the methods adopted by Russian Railways for fastening containers in open wagons based on the use of wood or pneumatic shells, calculates the longitudinal and transverse forces acting on the fastening, and gives recommendations for newly developed devices.

In modern conditions, due to the significant progress made by Russian scientists and specialists in the field of train flow compaction through the introduction of advanced systems of interval train control, the issue of selecting the most rational of them is becoming more and more relevant. The aim of the work was to approve the methodology of technical and economic evaluation of the efficiency of various systems of interval regulation on single-track polygons. Within the framework of the research the game theory in combination with simulation modelling with the use of process approach for simulation of on-duty personnel actions, agent-based approach for train operation mode selection, system dynamics for traction calculations were applied. The approach was tested on the basis of the Northern Latitudinal Railway, and payoff matrices for five systems were formed. The efficiency limits of the main interval control systems were determined depending on the track development of operation points of a single-track polygon, type of train timetable, train flow characteristics and other operating conditions. For the Northern Latitudinal Railway at the designed traffic sizes the optimal is the use of autoblocking with «fixed» blocks at partial-platoon timetable with two trains in a platoon, after carrying out a sufficient number of tests on operation in the autoblocking mode under similar conditions the maximum efficiency can be demonstrated by the system Anaconda developed by AO NIIAS. The proposed game-theoretic approach to select the most economically efficient traffic control system on a single-track polygon taking into account the local conditions of its operation can be used to rationalize the distribution of Russian Railways investments. The conclusions formulated as a result of its application do not contradict the basic provisions of the theory of traffic flows and complement the studies devoted to the interval regulation efficiency evaluation on single-track polygons.

The torsional moment of inertia is an important geometric characteristic of the elements of spatial bridge structures. The torsional rigidity of the elements affects the nature of the structure’s operation both directly and indirectly. If this parameter is incorrectly determined, the theoretical behavior of the structure under load may show a significant difference from its actual operation. Therefore, the importance of correct calculation of the torsional stiffness of elements in the calculations of spatial structures cannot be overestimated. The main problem in determining the torsional moment of inertia is the high complexity of calculations for sections of a general type. Strict mathematical expressions only apply to circular sections. This paper discusses various methods that are most often used in the practice of engineering calculations of bridge structures. The main mathematical aspects of these methods are covered and their main advantages and disadvantages are briefly noted. For a T-section beam, typical of reinforced concrete bridge superstructures, comparative calculations were carried out using all the methods discussed in the article. It is shown that the results of calculations based on FEM, performed in the foreign program Midas Civil and the domestic program Paris, are in good agreement with each other, and show minimal deviation from the results calculated by the analytical method of membrane analogy. The sampling frequency of finite element meshes affects the uncertainty of the results. In the Midas Civil program, the selection of the optimal size of the final elements is carried out by the contractor by searching through various options. In the program Paris the selection of a finite element mesh is carried out automatically based on the conditions of minimizing calculation time and ensuring a minimum error in the results. Simplified approaches provide greater error but require minimal labor, therefore, it is advisable to use them only for sketch calculations. An increase in the frequency of dividing the section under consideration into rectangular primitives in simplified methods leads to an increase in the error of the calculation results. The most acceptable results are obtained with a minimum number of partitions.

The article introduces a temperature functional, with temperature of the soil and its gradient along the vertical axis in freezing clay soil as its arguments, by which a two-parameter criterion for the onset of intense cryogenic capillary-film water transfer is formulated for addressing moisture regulation tasks in freezing soils.
An algorithm for solving the problem of determining the lower boundary of the cryogenic water transfer zone in the soil mass, at any stage of its freezing, using a special module Freeze-1a within the Freeze-1 software complex, is presented.
An example of determining the functional dependence used in the two-parameter criterion for the onset of intense cryogenic water transfer in laboratory conditions is provided for an operational section of the roadbed composed of clay with a plasticity index of 0.10.
Verification of the calculation algorithm for determining the lower boundary of the intense cryogenic water transfer zone according to the two-parameter temperature criterion using the results of monitoring the water-thermal regime on a section of the operational roadbed has been conducted. The obtained data allowed concluding on the correctness of the proposed approach to determining the level of the lower boundary of the intense cryogenic water transfer zone. Additionally, they demonstrated sufficient convergence between calculated and actual depths of soil freezing in the roadbed, indicating the adequacy of the one-dimensional temperature field model determined using the Freeze-1 software complex.

The evenness indicator of road surfaces is one of the key indicators when assessing the technical condition of roads, ensuring safety, analyzing the occurrence of defects and forecasting the technical condition. At least ten different ways to determine the evenness indicator exist. The amplitude method is one of the most highly accurate; it is based on geometric leveling with a leveling step of 5 m. The method, with all its advantages, has disadvantages; one of the main ones is the fixed length of the path segment (5 m) on which the amplitude of the unevenness is determined. All uneven lengths less than 5 m are estimated unreliably, which leads to errors in assessing the quality of road surfaces. The complexity of measurements increases many times as the leveling step decreases. The use of laser scanners and other Global Navigation Satellite System-based measuring systems does not ensure measurement accuracy. Measurement systems based on measuring the inclination angles of a moving object using inclinometers, accelerometers, gyroscopic systems, including inertial systems, are affected by linear accelerations, which affects the accuracy of measurements.
The essence of the proposed solutions is to measure slopes without using continuous correction of the spatial position of the gyroscope axis relative to the horizon. An improved method, which is based on measuring the longitudinal angle of inclination of a moving object (undercarriage), the distance traveled and calculating elevations by integrating data, is implemented on the basis of the Universal Decimal Classification Evenness. This method allows you to determine the unevenness of road surfaces with an accuracy of about 1 mm, repeatability from different measurement cycles is within 1 mm.