Everyday life of the railway construction in the North of Russia: building of the Murmansk highway and changes in the revolutionary 1917

Based on archive materials and published sources the paper studies the questions of railway builders' every-day life during the construction of the Murmansk railway as well as in 1917, the period of revolutionary changes. The author suggests aspects of transformation of some social values, which provoked social strain condition and strengthened old psychological stereotypes at the same time. The study shows such daily structures as human being attitude to surrounding world’s belongings, relationship with other people and social mood. The railway builders, who have become unwilling settlers in the North of Russia, felt polycultural character of the region they found themselves together with thousands of other working migrants to Karelia and Kola North. Increasing of ethnic criminality connected with arriving of Chinese workers is identified as one of the factors, which made every-day life of construction workers and office- workers unstable.

LIGHTING CONCRETE PRODUCTION FEATURES AND PROSPECTS OF APPLICATION IN RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION

The prospect of light-conducting concrete in railway construction is associated with an increase in recent years in interest in creating a barrier-free environment, including at railway stations, platforms, pedestrian crossings, in pedestrian tunnels, and so on. The material makes it possible to duplicate marking elements in hazardous areas of passenger movement at night without breaking the material environment, which will facilitate care for it in the winter. When creating innovative pedestrian crossings (equipped with interactive lanes that duplicate the traffic light for pedestrians), the use of light-conducting concrete will increase the antivandistance of the engineering arrangement. Unlike polymeric materials, the litracon material considered in the article does not change its properties under the influence of high temperatures, is not susceptible to instantaneous violation of the integrity and loss of surface properties under mechanical stresses. The high cost of the material does not yet allow its widespread use in the construction of railway infrastructure facilities on an industrial scale, however, with an increase in the production of optical fiber (the most expensive component of light-conducting concrete) and the search for new technologies that reduce the cost of its production, a drop in prices for this type of raw material is naturally expected. One of the areas of application of light-conducting concrete can be transport construction and landscaping of on-site territories (sidewalks, stairs, platforms) in terms of increasing their interactivity in the dark. The article proposes a composition (No. 1) corresponding to the compressive strength and tensile strength when bending, the requirements for products used in railway construction, for which light-conductive concrete can be used. The problem of light-transmitting concrete in the maintenance of railway infrastructure in the Republic of Belarus is being raised for the first time

Savva I. Mamontov on the Railway Industry in Russia

The article reprinted from the Zheleznodorozhnoe delo (Rail Business) journal published 110 years ago reviews in detail the content of the brochure «On Railway Industry in Russia» edited by Savva Mamontov, one of the richest, well-known businessmen and benefactors of his time, who had got direct experience of managing construction and operation of railways. The brochure exposed the opinion of Savva Mamontov regarding numerous advantages of private railway construction contracting and further operation based on, speaking modern language, private-public partnership. The described advantages comprised speed of construction, rational cost policy, etc. The reviewer while agreeing with S. Mamontov on some issues insisted on more profound study of possible changes in traditional model of private and public railways that existed in Russia.

Resource planning of the railway facilities construction technological process with the use of an artificial neural network

The article is dedicated to theoretical and practical research in the resource planning field for the railway facilities’ construction technological process using artificial neural networks. The study is a part of the subsystem in the development of railway construction engineering and technical maintenance — engineering and technical maintenance of railway facilities construction technological process. The subsystem is based on the effective automated systems use with elements of artificial intelligence. This is caused by deviations occurrence from the target requirements during the technological process implementation, due to the railway construction stochasticity, and the need for a prompt revision of the already made decisions. The existing methods allow us to correct the construction work organization, however, the technology remains unchanged, which is dictated by the design documentation and the work safety requirements. To give technological process flexibility in order to adapt to work changing conditions, it is necessary to provide an operational solution to the resource planning problem. The existing resource planning methods peculiarities, the current problem dimension, and the need to take into account a number of restrictions allow us to use artificial intelligence tools. In this regard, a methodology and a railway facilities construction technological process resource planning (labor, technical) computational-logical model with the artificial neural network use were developed. This approach is based on the lack of precise algorithmic actions or rules that can provide the desired result without formal complications. Also, the author has developed a special software module, prepared a data sample, an artificial neural network topological structure, and implemented an algorithm for its training, configuration, and testing. Based on the theoretical research and software module application results, the article presents the practical aspects of resource planning for the railway roadbed flooded embankment erection technological process.