A Dual-Guided Column-Generation-Based Matheuristic for Integrated Railroad Blocking

2026 • Yida Xu^†, Zhengzhong Ricky You^†, Baichuan Mo Transportation Science (Planned Submission)

^† Co-first authors; contributed equally.

To be submitted to Transportation Science.

The associated team is a finalist in the 2026 INFORMS Railway Applications Section (RAS) Problem Solving Competition.

Yida Xu and Zhengzhong Ricky You contributed equally.

The matheuristic combines a Dantzig-Wolfe reformulation with feasible construction, destroy-and-repair search, dual-guided path generation, and joint repair for integrated railroad blocking.

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