This paper presents a systematic and comprehensive analysis procedure for predicting the reliability of the railway industry in order to identify the factors affecting the reliability and obtain a more accurate estimate. This study will also help railway industry managers to better understand the importance of reliability and optimize important performance indicators in the railway industry and to understand the advances that can be made to improve reliability in the railway industry. This study also presents a comprehensive allocation framework with regard to the features of a passenger railway system and possible alternatives; In addition to system reliability, the proposed process can allocate life cycle costs and service reliability to determine the optimal investment plan for designing or updating the rail system. This comprehensive approach can help the rail industry in predicting the reliability of systems and subsystems and identifying the ideal balance between cost, reliability and timing of passenger trains in order to achieve optimal rail system design.

This paper is about a risk assessment based approach, for the purpose of evaluating safety performance of the Iran railway industry in some known fire risk areas in a passenger train. The importance of fire investigation is totally due to the railway industry’s authority to control fire related elements and prevent such fire related incidents and accidents by implementing a proper planning and systematic education or at least reducing the damages to the passengers and their financial consequences. According to %25 increase in the fire rate during the period 1997-1999 and %11 reduction in the total rail accidents rate, the importance of fire risk assessment would be increased. Fuzzy FMEA based Grey theory analysis is used for fire risk analysis in three main parts of the railway industry, namely power and air conditioning of passenger wagons, generator and steam. The goal of this methodology are fire hazard detection and diagnosis to determine their causes, the occurrence rate and the severity of the hazard consequences qualitatively, computing the risk value of each failure in its specific subset and analyze the current fire related gaps in the railway industry. Providing a comprehensive data log of all fire mishap reports, would be a useful tool to develop quantitative hazard analysis and risk assessment approaches to improve the current qualitative risk evaluation method in the near future, for the purpose of safety and prevention of fire hazard and its consequences.

This article deals with the technical schools concerning railways during the years 1928 - 1941 and discusses the necessity of these institutions and the role they played in the human sources training in the railway industry. The hypothesis of the study is that because of policymakers such as Ali Akbar Khan Davar, who emphasized of National Economy as a precondition of National State, the railway was a very important issue in the formation of the National Economy. Thus in respect of the development of this industry, the human source training via exclusive schools was a topic mean at that time. Apparently, the Friedrich List economic viewpoints, directly or indirectly, had a great role in this regard. The main question of this article is: what role did the technical schools play in the development of Trans-Iranian railways? According to sources of this article such as the exclusive journals of railway admiration, the acts of Parliament, unpublished records, and published books, this study tries to respond to that question.

There is a need among railway track maintenance and management for a better understanding of the railway track systems and for improved predictive techniques. Railway maintenance procedures form an integer part of expenditures in railway industries. The aim of this research is development of an appropriate system for maintenance of Iranian railway track in a management system frame work. In this context، current maintenance management systems in the USA، Europe and Asia were reviewed and 5 systems were identified (RAILER، ECOTRACK، TRACKS، RAMSYS and DTM). The research indicated that to characterize the railway and maintenance approaches in Iran، a new strategy was made in order to improve maintenance and management decision system in Iranian railway. This research identifies and classifies the best system for every characteristics such as failures، traffic and facilities، and also provides a system lines on the basis of the quality and analysis track information.

Nowadays, transportation plays a major role in the political, economic, and social development processes. In this regard, railway industry is of higher priority over other transportation types due to various features including less fuel consumption, reduced environmental pollution, higher safety, less land use, and more passenger and commodity transfer rate. Therefore, focusing on its improvement and necessity of preventing the crises resulted from threatening grounds are among the inevitable requirements in this area [1, 2]. Since penetration of quicksands into railway tracks results in sand deposition on the tracks, track obstruction, train derailment, track flexibility damage, failure of railway fleet and electrical signs, and in fact leads to crisis, the present study is aimed to investigate the traditional and modern methods as well as an innovative method for reducing the penetration of sands into the tracks and reducing their accumulation on railway tracks. In addition to the currently existing solutions, the present study is focused on an approach for creating sand passage channels in embankments, modifying the hump-shaped geometrical form of the track sleepers, and providing an optimal channel design for easy movement of sands and leaving the sand passage path open for quick movement of the sands from the railway track area.

The aim of this study was to delineate the institutional mapping of innovation in the rail transportation industry in the country. On the basis of centered concept of national innovation system in the form of six dimensions of Economic Cooperation and Development Organization Approach, we identify effective institutions in any sector and institutional mapping outline was drawn railway industry. In order to draw institutional mapping while taking advantage of expert opinions, six major steps in this article were evaluated, including identification of existing organizations in the field of rail transportation, understanding the relationships among competitors between institutions in this industry, providing institutional matrix-function for the status quo of the industry, providing an initial institutional mapping for the industry, and providing an overview on the outline of the institutional mapping of the railway transport industry.

Development of an optimized strategy for the maintenance of Iranian railway track maintenance in a form of management system was made in this research. Through reviewing the current maintenance management system in the USA, Europe and Asia as well as investigating the characteristics of railway structure and current maintenance approaches in Iran, a new algorithm was made in order to improve efficiency of maintenance decision system and maintenance planning in Iranian railway industry. The practicability and reliability of the new maintenance algorithm (model) were evaluated by applying the new proposed algorithm in a railway line in Tehran province. It was shown that the new proposed maintenance management system (algorithm) is effective in providing an optimized maintenance strategies and plans. It was also shown that track operation can be evaluated by sensitivity analyses of the proposed model.

Determining the model of railroad degradation can play an important role in preventing failures and, consequently, reducing maintenance costs in the railway industry. Railroad deterioration model is known as the most practical of such models. However, current deterioration models are static models that focus only on the independent effects of some of the parameters affecting deterioration.This paper proposed a new railroad deterioration dynamic model based on System Dynamics (SD) theory. SD as a scientific attitude analyzes the system's behavior over time through its feedback structure. The proposed model, in addition to studying the simultaneous effects of different parameters, evaluates the railroad deterioration dynamically.Implementation and validation of the proposed model of deterioration, using a real example of Iran's railways, indicates the accuracy of the obtained results. Another great consequence of proposed dynamic model is determining the deterioration function in terms of time in Iran railway. This function can be used to predict the deterioration of the railroad in future periods. This function has the ability to configure to other railway networks in the world.

Higher education in Iran has excessively increased in the past years resulting in high numbers of unemployed engineers. However, railway engineering major that has been established by the direct support of the railway industry and due to its needs, had a positive impact on strengthening the workforce. In this research, the experience of this school is reviewed. Afterwards by using data envelopment analysis, the efficiency of 19 regions of Iranian railways are analyzed based on their human resources. The results of the model show that the least excess of employees belongs to the graduate degree and higher with just 2 percent, underlying the fact the correct policy have been adopted so far. Efficient regions are Fars, Jonoob Shargh, Shomal Gharb, Tehran and Lorestan. Maximum excess employees were seen at Shargh region with 30 and 21 persons for graduate and higher and associate degree, while the highest rate of excess employees with diploma or lower degree belonge to Hormozgan region. In total, 14 percent of railway employees with diploma degree or lower are redundant that must be taken into consideration for future employments so that the least new employments be done in this category.

Train driving is a high responsibility job in railway industry. Train drivers need different cognitive functions such as vigilance, object detection, memory, planning, decision-making. High level of fatigue is one of the caused factor of accidents among train drivers. Numerous factors can impact train drivers’ fatigue but high level of workload is a key factor. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate workload and its relationship with fatigue among train drivers in Keshesh section of Iranian Railway Company. This descriptive analytical study was done among 100 train drivers in Keshesh section of Iranian Railway industry. They were selected by simple random sampling. The NASA-TLX workload scale and Samn-Perelli fatigue scale were respectively used to investigate workload and fatigue. Data were analyzed by Paired t-test and Spearman correlation coefficient. According to the NASA-TLX results, effort and mental workload with the mean score of 74/22 and 73/31 were respectively the most important attributes of workload among train drivers. No significant relationship was observed between workload and level of fatigue before departure and half an hour before reaching the destination station (P>0.05). However, the relationship between of workload and level of fatigue half an hour before the end of shift (on the way back to the origin station) was statistically significant (P=0.048) among the sample population. Effort and mental workload were the most important attributes of workload among train drivers. By focusing on these two variables and adopting fatigue management programs, fatigue and workload can be controlled and the efficiency of the whole system can be enhanced accordingly.