This paper includes a study conducted to analyse the current state of supply and demand for higher education in rail logistics. More specifically the study presented consists of two surveys, as follows. The first survey, Supply Survey, explores existing transport and logistics-related courses and educational programmes offered in higher education institutions. The second survey, Demand Survey, examines demands for rail logistics higher education and aims to understand the current needs for higher education in the sector. This paper shows that a spectrum of rail, freight transport and logistics related courses and programmes exist, however there is a strong need for a more specific training and education offering operations management skills needed to improve the company performance, efficiency and quality of service provided

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The paper presents a technical station model using the graphical evaluation and review technique-GERT. The network model reflects the operation of trainset service in compliance with the technology and technical equipment as well as interaction between technological systems at the service stations that are different by track development but connected to big passenger stations, which gives a possibility of determining the service time of trainsets depending on the number of carriages and the specificity of operation conditions. This GERT model is applied to the case study of an individual service station within the railway network in Bulgaria. The regression functions of service time are worked out according to the type and the number of carriages taking into account the limitation parameters. The functions obtained could be used for trainset scheduling to optimize the operation of passenger carriage fleet.

335and maintenance of software for distributed corporate systems with a maximal convenience. Its software is called CORBA-application. Each object requests broker ORB producer, which, practically, is the CORBA, theoretically can propose its own protocol of transport service for data transmission. In this case the expanded name of technology, for example CORBA/IIOP, which reflects the name of the IIOP network protocol. With the aid of IIOP protocol any CORBA/IIOP application can interact with other CORBA/IIOP-applications independent of hardware, software and operation systems producers. ConclusionThe realized scientific research and practically developed works certificate that in the near future the most perspective are object-oriented Java RMI technologies and component-oriented EJB-and J2EE-technologies for the distributed corporate systems design. The EJB-and J2EE-technologies application is expedient in systems, based in using a powerful DBMS as the systems kernel. For a example, it can be the e-commerce systems, banking systems, business platforms and e-shops. Author's Information

Passenger rolling stock scheduling to the passenger train timetable is based on the same type and number of carriages, which is the standard way of passenger trainset assignment. The possibility of train scheduling with a single carriage, a group of carriages or a railcar is topical issue for each carrier engaged in rail passenger transport in order to reduce the required rolling stock fleet. The paper presents an original network model developed for rolling stock scheduling for trainsets. The model makes possible to determine the optimum distribution of rolling stock in trainsets minimizing downtime at stations through the out-of-kilter algorithm. The model developed is applied to the scheduling of trainsets in part of the railway network in Bulgaria served by BDZ Passenger Transport Enterprise at the Plovdiv region. The use of the model allows to save passenger rolling stock and increases the efficiency of passenger rolling stock operation.