Scientific paper ID 2085 : 2021/3

During the operation of stations railway infrastructure is depreciated, the size of train flows constantly changеs, which s periodic reconstructions and renovations. The station throat is the place that should provide an opportunity for parallel performance of a larger number of operations to ensure traffic and shunting work as well as traffic safety. Therefore, it is proposed to use its relative occupancy to assess the throats for an estimated period with a maximum number of movements.

In order to illustrate the suggested methods, the paper examines both the historical development of the passenger station of Sofia and its rehabilitation in recent years. The paper analyses the western throat built in 1974 and its possibilities in terms of train and shunting operations. The design mouth scheme during rehabilitation and the proposed scheme with the same number and type of switches are examined. Their relative employment for an estimated interval of 180 minutes with 48 implemented movements are determined for each of the three schemes. The obtained results have confirmed that one of this indicator can be used to assess different designs of throat schemes and the optimal one is that with minimal values of the examined indicator.