A study of the effects of winterclimate and atmospheric icing onhigh-speed passenger trains

Abstract: Harsh winter climate causes various problems for both the public andprivate sector in Sweden, especially in the northern part and the railway industryis no exception. This master thesis project covers an investigation of the eects ofthe winter climate and a phenomena called atmospheric icing on the performance ofthe train in a region called the Botnia-Atlantica region. The investigation was donewith data over a short period January-February 2017 with simulated weather datafrom the Weather research and forecast model that was compared with the periodOctober - December 2016. The investigation only included high speed trains.The trains have been analysed based on two dierent performance measurements.The cumulative delay which is the increment in delay over a section and the currentdelay which is the current delay compared to the schedule. Cumulative delaysare investigated with survival analysis and the current delay is investigated with aMulti-state Markov model.The results show that the weather could have an eect on the trains performancewhere the survival analysis detected connection between the weather and cumulativedelays. The Markov model also showed a connection between the weather anddelayed trains including that the presence of atmospheric icing had a negative eecton remaining in a state of non-delay.