Abstract
The increasing amount of train traffic highlights the necessity of automated tools for decision support, mainly when the availability of tracks is known on a day-by-day basis and no long-term schedules can be made. The paper describes the use of CaseLP, a logic programming based environment for developing multi-agent system prototypes, to face the management of freight trains traffic between the Italian stations of Milano and La Spezia. This real case-study, developed within the framework of the EuROPE-TRIS Project, has been chosen for evaluating the benefits of prototyping and testing a decision support system following an agent-based approach. The choice of a logic programming paradigm as the basis for the prototyping environment is motivated and compared with other existing solutions.