Shunting for Dummies: An Introductory Algorithmic Survey

Gatto, Michael; Maue, Jens; Mihaľák, Matúš; Widmayer, Peter

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-05465-5_13

Cited by 39 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…There are numerous tactics for sorting the wagons using roll-ins and pull-backs (see e.g. Boysen et al (2012) or Gatto et al (2009) for an overview), and this paper considers the practice used in Sweden: multi-stage train formation with mixing tracks (see next section for an introduction, or Bohlin et al (2015) for a more thorough description).…”

Section: Marshalling Yard Operationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Extensive (but non-comprehensive) classification schemes for marshalling yard planning problems are found in Hansmann and Zimmerman (2008) and Stefano et al (2007). Further, Gatto et al (2009) and Boysen et al (2012), provide overviews of marshalling procedures and sorting methods.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Marshalling methods are either single-stage, where the wagons can be pulled back only once, or multi-stage, where the wagons can be pulled back multiple times (Gatto et al (2009)). Another dividing factor is the objective function.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The four most commonly mentioned sorting schemes, Sorting by trains, Sorting by block, Triangular Sorting and Geometric Sorting, are described in e.g. Gatto et al (2009), Boysen et al (2012 and Jacob et al (2011). The sorting schemes take a set of inbound wagons and sort them into outbound trains without considering arrival or departure times.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Towards a comprehensive model for track allocation and roll-time scheduling at marshalling yards

Gestrelius

Aronsson

Joborn

et al. 2017

Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management

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This paper considers multi-stage train formation with mixed usage tracks at a marshalling yard without departure yard. A novel integer programming model for scheduling shunting tasks as well as allocating arrival yard tracks and classification bowl tracks is presented. By taking a comprehensive view of the marshalling yard operations, more effective schedules can be found, and a variety of characteristics can be optimised, including shunting work effort, number or cost of tracks, and shunting task start times. Two different objective functions are evaluated: minimising work effort in terms of wagon pull-backs and minimising track costs. A procedure for finding a hot-start solution with few wagon pull-backs is also presented. The proposed model is tested on real data from Sävenäs marshalling yard in Sweden. The results show that the method is able to return an optimal schedule for a planning period of 4 days if the hot-start solution is optimal or the remaining problem is tractable for the heuristics in CPLEX.

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Section: Marshalling Yard Operationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Towards a comprehensive model for track allocation and roll-time scheduling at marshalling yards

Gestrelius

Aronsson

Joborn

et al. 2017

Journal of Rail Transport Planning & Management

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“…For a survey of shunting in the freight rail industry, the reader is referred to e.g. Gatto et al (2009) and Boysen et al (2012).…”

Section: Accepted Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating rolling stock scheduling with train unit shunting

Haahr¹,

Lusby

2017

European Journal of Operational Research

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Highlights• We develop two integrated frameworks for scheduling rolling stock and train unit shunting.• We provide a comparison of several methods for solving the Track Allocation Problem.• We give a counter example demonstrating the suboptimality of a previously proposed optimal method. AbstractIn this paper we consider integrating two important railway optimization problems, in particular the Rolling Stock Scheduling Problem and the Train Unit Shunting Problem. We present two similar branch-and-cut based approaches to solve this integrated problem and, in addition, provide a comparison of different approaches to solve the so-called Track Assignment problem, a subcomponent of the Train Unit Shunting problem. In this analysis we demonstrate, by way of a counter example, the heuristic nature of a previously argued optimal approach. For the integrated problem we analyze the performance of the proposed approaches on several real-life case studies provided by DSB S-tog, a suburban train operator in the greater Copenhagen area. Computational results confirm the necessity of the integrated approach; high quality solutions to the integrated problem are obtained on instances where a conventional, sequential approach ends in infeasibility. Furthermore, for the considered instances, solutions are typically found within a few minutes, indicating the applicability of the methodology to short-term planning.

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A matheuristic approach to integrate humping and pullout sequencing operations at railroad hump yards

Haahr

Lusby

2015

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This paper presents a novel matheuristic for solving the Hump Yard Block-to-Track Assignment Problem. This is an important problem arising in the railway freight industry and involves scheduling the transitions of a set of rail cars from a set of inbound trains to a set of outbound trains over a certain planning horizon. It was also the topic of the 2014 challenge organised by the Railway Applications Section of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences for which the proposed matheuristic was awarded first prize. Our approach decomposes the problem into three highly dependent subproblems. Optimization-based strategies are adopted for two of these, while the third is solved using a greedy heuristic. We demonstrate the efficiency of the complete framework on the official datasets, where solutions within 4-14% of a known lower bound (to a relaxed problem) are found. We further show that improvements of around 8% can be achieved if outbound trains are allowed to be delayed by up to two hours in the hope of ensuring an earlier connection for some of the rail cars.

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Shunting for Dummies: An Introductory Algorithmic Survey

Cited by 39 publications

References 18 publications

Towards a comprehensive model for track allocation and roll-time scheduling at marshalling yards

Towards a comprehensive model for track allocation and roll-time scheduling at marshalling yards

Integrating rolling stock scheduling with train unit shunting

A matheuristic approach to integrate humping and pullout sequencing operations at railroad hump yards

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