Cascade is a rail maintenance scheduling optimisation prototype built around the CAPO framework:

• Capture maintenance demand and available resources
• Assess time, space, resource, and safety constraints
• Prioritise work by urgency, trust, and operational value
• Optimise the nightly schedule against limited engineering hours and manpower

The app helps a duty manager turn competing maintenance requests into a conflict-aware nightly plan, understand why work was moved or deferred, and test whether adding resources would improve output.

Features

• Maintenance request intake with trust and priority scoring
• Constraint and conflict detection across sectors, crews, equipment, and work compatibility
• Priority-weighted schedule optimisation for overnight engineering windows
• Interactive Gantt-style crew schedule
• Conflict warnings with suggested alternatives
• Resource management for crews, equipment, and sectors
• What-if simulator for extra crews, equipment, or engineering time
• Dashboard KPIs and bottleneck analysis

Architecture

React + Vite frontend
        |
        | /api proxy
        v
Express backend (Node.js)
        |
        v
SQLite local database

• Frontend: React 19, TypeScript, Vite, React Router, TanStack Query, Recharts, Tailwind CSS
• Backend: Express, TypeScript, built-in Node.js SQLite (node:sqlite)
• Database: generated locally in backend/capo.db and seeded automatically on first run

Requirements

• Node.js 24+
• npm

Setup

Install dependencies for both apps:

npm install
cd backend && npm install && cd ..

Start frontend and backend together:

npm run dev:all

Open:

• Frontend: http://localhost:5173
• Backend API: http://localhost:3001/api

If port 3001 is already in use, stop the old backend process and run npm run dev:all again.

Scripts

Root project:

npm run dev       # start Vite frontend only
npm run dev:all   # start backend + frontend together
npm run build     # type-check and build frontend
npm run lint      # run oxlint
npm run preview   # preview frontend build

Backend:

cd backend
npm run dev       # start backend in watch mode
npm run build     # compile backend TypeScript
npm start         # run compiled backend

Database

Cascade uses a local SQLite database file under backend/. Runtime database files are intentionally ignored by git:

backend/*.db*

A fresh database is created and seeded automatically from backend/src/db/seed.ts when the backend starts and no requests exist.

Main API areas

• GET /api/requests — list maintenance requests
• POST /api/requests — create a request
• POST /api/optimise — run scheduling optimisation
• GET /api/schedule — retrieve the current schedule
• POST /api/what-if — simulate added resources or time
• GET /api/crews — list crews
• GET /api/equipment — list equipment
• GET /api/sectors — list sectors

Notes

This is a hackathon/MVP prototype. It is designed for local demonstration rather than production deployment.