This state-of-the-art survey constitutes papers that were selected after an open call that followed the International Dagstuhl-Seminar on Algorithmic Methods for Railway Optimization, held in Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, in June 2004. The second part of the volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Algorithmic Methods and Models for Optimization of Railways, ATMOS 2004, held in Bergen, Norway, in September 2004 in the context of the combined conference ALGO 2004.

The volume covers algorithmic methods for analyzing and solving problems arising in railway optimization with special focus on the interplay between railway and other public transport systems. Beside algorithmics and mathematical optimization, the relevance of formal models and the influence of applicational aspects for problem modeling are considered as well. The papers also address experimental studies and or useful prototype implementations.

The 17 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions and are organized in topical sections on network and line planning, timetabling and timetable information, rolling stock and crew scheduling, and real-time operations.