Tootfinder

1. Plan going to Opole, via Kościan.
2. When you enter the train to Kościan, you discover that the change to Opole is delayed 15 minutes already. Consider changing in Leszno instead; if the delay increases, you'd have more options there.
3. Discover that there aren't any more options in Leszno today. Your change is delayed 30 minutes already. Return the reservations, and take one the other way, to Poznań instead.
4. Train station in Kościan. The displays aren't showing any delays, trains are announced normally. Tell people about the delays, so they won't stand in the -10°C waiting for the train to arrive.
5. Take the train to Poznań, and try to figure out what to do next.
6. Discover that the only reasonable choice going forward is Inowrocław: no delays and good return connection. It's the same train, so take another reservation. Your current seat is already taken there, so move elsewhere.
7. Your train should be followed by another one in the same direction, that departs from Poznań 6 minutes later. However, your train ends up waiting for another delayed train, so the other train goes first. The delay further increases as your train needs to slow down after the other train.
8. Reach Inowrocław 10 minutes later. That's not a problem, since you didn't have enough to see for all the time there anyway.
9. Discover that the town is more interesting than you thought, and you'd use more time.
10. When you almost get to the station, discover that your train is 10 minutes late. Not that you have any use for that time at this point.
11. When you're at the station, the train keeps increasing delay while waiting at the previous station, in Bydgoszcz. The station displays are completely useless, as they show only a random subset of regional trains, for no apparent reason. The announcements include all trains, but are rarely given.
12. The delay keeps increasing. Start thinking about getting a reservation for the next train to Poznań, in case it arrived first. You can't return the reservation after the planned departure time, and you can't have two reservations simultaneously, so reserve the seat from Mogilno, the next station.
13. The next train arrives first. While on board, you discover that you're not going to have any train home for 1.5 hr. Take another seat reservation to Leszno, where you can change into a suburban train and get home 15 minutes earlier than from Poznań. This time, your seat is still free.
14. The train departs 15 minutes delayed from Poznań. After all, you're changing trains in Kościan.
So I was going to go south, to Opole, via Kościan. Instead, I've ended up slingshotting north to Inowrocław, and getting back home via the same train as if I were in Opole.
#rail

Day 24: Yvonne Adhiambra Owuor
Owuor wrote "Dust", a novel that follows a scattered family's struggles with intergenerational trauma through a vivid tapestry of Kenyan history. Not only is it full of carefully rendered complex characters who both deal with their own issues and who are entangled in larger threads, but it also depicts a series of deeply personal reactions to and interactions with historical moments that give a gestalt sense of the painful history of Kenya both during and after the colonial era.
It's a gripping read despite not having a traditional suspense structure, where in the last third of the book every chapter seems to be tying up one more loose thread you had almost forgotten about, only to leave a little more still to discover, right up to the end. Owuor's skill at constructing such a detailed and complex plot and especially in navigating it to a satisfying conclusion is impressive, and her depictions of human foibles and struggles in the face of grief and not-wanting-to-know are relatable.
CW for domestic abuse, state murder, genocide, torture, etc.
#30AuthorsNoMen

Moody Urbanity - Up ☁️
情绪化城市 - 上面 ☁️
📷 Nikon FE
🎞️ Lucky SHD 400
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

Benders Decomposition for Passenger-Oriented Train Timetabling with Hybrid Periodicity
Zhiyuan Yao, Anita Sch\"obel, Lei Nie, Sven J\"ager
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.09892 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.09892 https://arxiv.org/html/2511.09892
arXiv:2511.09892v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Periodic timetables are widely adopted in passenger railway operations due to their regular service patterns and well-coordinated train connections. However, fluctuations in passenger demand require varying train services across different periods, necessitating adjustments to the periodic timetable. This study addresses a hybrid periodic train timetabling problem, which enhances the flexibility and demand responsiveness of a given periodic timetable through schedule adjustments and aperiodic train insertions, taking into account the rolling stock circulation. Since timetable modifications may affect initial passenger routes, passenger routing is incorporated into the problem to guide planning decisions towards a passenger-oriented objective. Using a time-space network representation, the problem is formulated as a dynamic railway service network design model with resource constraints. To handle the complexity of real-world instances, we propose a decomposition-based algorithm integrating Benders decomposition and column generation, enhanced with multiple preprocessing and accelerating techniques. Numerical experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm and highlight the advantage of hybrid periodic timetables in reducing passenger travel costs.
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