This paper investigates dynamic railcar planning in railroad classification yards. The plan decides the assignment of railcars from inbound trains to outbound trains under various size limitations of outbound trains and allows dynamic sequencing of inbound train classification and outbound train assembly. A mixed-integer program is presented for the problem along with a heuristic algorithm based on the harmony search strategy. The numerical results based on both a real-world case and randomly created instances show that dynamic sequencing can reduce total dwell time compared to static sequencing, especially when more trains are classified at a yard. However, the savings on average dwell time for each railcar become smaller when the traffic volume goes up. Once the volume through a yard is close to its capacity, the dwell time per rail car goes up very quickly and the benefit of dynamic sequencing diminishes. It implies that the benefit of dynamic sequencing is more significant for yards with lower traffic volume.


    Access

    Check access

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Dynamic railcar connection planning in classification yards


    Contributors:
    Li, H. (author) / Jin, M. (author) / Song, R. (author) / He, S. (author) / Song, J. (author)

    Published in:

    Transportation Letters ; 8 , 2 ; 77-89


    Publication date :

    2016-03-14


    Size :

    13 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English





    Sill Connection for Railcar Structure

    RICHMOND SHAUN | European Patent Office | 2024

    Free access

    SILL CONNECTION FOR RAILCAR STRUCTURE

    RICHMOND SHAUN | European Patent Office | 2021

    Free access

    Sill connection for railcar structure

    RICHMOND SHAUN | European Patent Office | 2023

    Free access

    Sill Connection for Railcar Structure

    RICHMOND SHAUN | European Patent Office | 2021

    Free access