Analysis of Hump Operation at a Railroad Classification Yard

Abstract

Railroad classification yards play a significant role in freight transportation: shipments are consolidated to benefit from economies of scales. However, the disassembling of inbound trains, the classification of railcars and reassembling of outbound trains add significant time to the overall transportation. Determining the operational schedule of a railroad classification yard to ensure that railcars pass as quickly as possible through the yard to continue with their journey to their final destination is a challenging problem. In this paper, we create a simulation model to mimic the dynamics of a classification yard and investigate the effect of two simple but practical priority rules (train length and arrival time) for the sequencing of inbound trains through the humping operation. We monitor the effect of these rules on performance measures such as average wait time (dwell time) at the yard and daily throughput as the complexity and frequency of the trains vary. We run the simulation on four data sets with low and high complexity of trains and low and high frequency of trains.

Analysis of the movement of an empty railcar on the longitudinal profile of the sorting slide

“…The development and improvement of the work of marshaling yards are carried out in scientific centers, universities, and research institutes of leading countries, including the University of Baltimore (USA), Technical University of Berlin (Germany), Swedish National Railway Administration (Sweden), St. Petersburg State Railway University (Russia), Russian Transport University (Russia), Ukrainian State University of Railway Transport (Ukraine), Tashkent State Transport University (Uzbekistan) [1,3,5,7,9,11,[13][14][15][16][17].…”

“…This, in turn, creates several problems. In developed countries, including the US, Germany, Sweden, China, India, and Russia much attention is paid to the development of methods, such as mechanization and automation of sorting ways of stations that affect haul transport and local rail network [1][2][3][4][5][6][7].…”

The determination of kinematic parameters of the rail car’s movement on the braking positions of marshalling yard of marshalling yard

“…Актуальность решения данной проблемы связана с требованиями по увеличению скорости и грузоподъёмности, стремление к соблюдению которых вызывает возникновение новых задач, в частности, задач снижения износа и обеспечения устойчивости подвижного состава. Решение этих задач требует системного подхода к проблеме на основе использования фундаментальных теорий и положений [2][3][4].…”

About the movement of the car on the high-speed sections of the sorting hill

“…As is known [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], public discussions about the correctness of the existing theoretical provisions of the design and technological calculations of the projected sections of the sorting slide have been actively discussed on the pages of the periodical press [11][12][13][14][15][16].…”