Shunting is an important component of single-wagon-load railway operations. It consists of splitting incoming freight trains and forming new outgoing trains by reassembling the wagons from different incoming trains. The efficiency of shunting operations has a major impact on the performance of rail freight services. An event-based model is proposed for sorting trains for shunting at a hump shunting yard, which is capable of handling real-time changes in the system. In this model, various events are designed for managing changes in the system over time. At each time step, the optimal sequence of trains for shunting is determined to maximize the throughput of the shunting yard. The model was tested in a benchmark study and was shown to be an improvement over the previous solutions as well as solutions based on the first-in, first-out strategy.
Event-Based Model for Optimizing Shunting Yard Operations
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board ; 2475 , 1 ; 90-94
2015-01-01
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Event-Based Model for Optimizing Shunting Yard Operations
Online Contents | 2015
|The new Wustermark shunting yard
Engineering Index Backfile | 1910
The new shunting yard at Mannheim
Engineering Index Backfile | 1907
Gravity shunting yard at Osterfeld South, Germany
Engineering Index Backfile | 1932
Gravity shunting yard at Osterfeld-South, Germany
Engineering Index Backfile | 1933