On time selection for track possession assignment at the railway station

We consider the problem on track possession assignment at the railway station. The problem is to determine the time during which the train traffic is interrupted for repair works at several railway tracks. To this end, we use a traffic schedule of the station in order to solve the problem on searching for the time interval having the following two properties. First, during this time interval, all track sections that are necessary to be repaired are vacant simultaneously. Second, this time interval has the maximum length. In addition, we solve two problems to determine the time interval having length that is not less than the length of the specified time interval in the following two cases. First, the desired time interval has the minimum number of occupied track sections that are necessary to be repaired. Second, the desired time interval has the minimum number of delayed (transferred) passenger/freight trains going through the tracks that are necessary to be repaired. All problems are solved by methods of mixed integer linear programming.