Predicting Train Delays in Finland Using Machine Learning and Weather Data

Abstract

Reliable railway operations depend increasingly on real-time environmental intelligence delivered through wireless sensor infrastructures, a capability that 6G networks will substantially enhance through integrated sensing and edge computing. Adverse weather, particularly in Arctic regions with extreme temperatures and heavy precipitation, remains a leading cause of train delays, yet most prediction approaches rely on raw meteorological inputs without exploiting domain-informed feature engineering. This paper investigates machine learning for train delay prediction using the Finland Integrated Train-Weather (FI-TW) dataset, which fuses railway operational records with observations from the Finnish Meteorological Institute's nationwide sensor network of approximately 200 stations communicating over wireless links. We evaluate three feature configurations using XGBoost at Oulu central station (101,146 observations): full weather features, instant weather observations only, and derived weather category scenarios. The category-based approach, employing hierarchical classifications such as Blizzard, Heavy Snow, and Extreme Cold, achieved an R^2 of 0.78, root mean squared error of 8.5 minutes, and mean absolute error of 3.7 minutes, representing an 11% R^2 improvement and 10% error reduction over alternative configurations. These results demonstrate that compact, domain-informed features derived from sensor streams outperform raw meteorological observations, offering bandwidth-efficient representations suitable for edge deployment over current and emerging wireless infrastructures.