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Scheduling Freight Trains in Rail-Rail Transshipment Yards

Author

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  • Nils Boysen

    (Lehrstuhl für Allgemeine Betriebswirtschaftslehre/Operations Management, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, D-07743 Jena, Germany)

  • Florian Jaehn

    (Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik, Universität Siegen, D-57068 Siegen, Germany)

  • Erwin Pesch

    (Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik, Universität Siegen, D-57068 Siegen, Germany)

Abstract

Transshipment yards, where gantry cranes enable the efficient transfer of containers between freight trains, are important entities in modern railway systems. They facilitate a general shift from point-to-point transport to hub-and-spoke railway systems, a shift being driven by concerted efforts within the European Union (EU) to transfer goods traffic from road to rail. Modern rail-rail transshipment yards accelerate container handling so that multiple smaller trains, with identical destinations, can be consolidated onto a reduced number of trains. An important problem attendant upon the daily operations of a transshipment yard is the train-scheduling problem, which involves determining the processing order of trains at parallel railway tracks. The present paper investigates this problem, with a special focus on resolving deadlocks and avoiding multiple crane picks per container move. A mathematical program along with a complexity proof is provided, and two different procedures are described: exact (dynamic programming) and heuristic (beam search).

Suggested Citation

  • Nils Boysen & Florian Jaehn & Erwin Pesch, 2011. "Scheduling Freight Trains in Rail-Rail Transshipment Yards," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 45(2), pages 199-211, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ortrsc:v:45:y:2011:i:2:p:199-211
    DOI: 10.1287/trsc.1100.0365
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Guo, Peng & Weidinger, Felix & Boysen, Nils, 2019. "Parallel machine scheduling with job synchronization to enable efficient material flows in hub terminals," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 110-121.
    2. Maksim Barketau & Erwin Pesch & Yakov Shafransky, 2016. "Scheduling dedicated jobs with variative processing times," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 774-785, February.
    3. Wenqian Liu & Xiaoning Zhu & Li Wang, 2019. "Distribution Organization Optimization for Inbound China Railway Express at Alataw Pass Railway Station," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(24), pages 1-19, December.
    4. Schulz, Arne & Fliedner, Malte & Fiedrich, Benedikt & Pfeiffer, Christian, 2021. "Levelling crane workload in multi-yard rail-road container terminals," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 293(3), pages 941-954.
    5. Alena Otto & Xiyu Li & Erwin Pesch, 2017. "Two-Way Bounded Dynamic Programming Approach for Operations Planning in Transshipment Yards," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(1), pages 325-342, February.
    6. Amir Gharehgozli & Debjit Roy & Suruchika Saini & Jan-Kees Ommeren, 2023. "Loading and unloading trains at the landside of container terminals," Maritime Economics & Logistics, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME), vol. 25(3), pages 549-575, September.
    7. Boysen, Nils & Fliedner, Malte & Jaehn, Florian & Pesch, Erwin, 2012. "Shunting yard operations: Theoretical aspects and applications," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 220(1), pages 1-14.
    8. Rupp, Johannes & Boysen, Nils & Briskorn, Dirk, 2022. "Optimizing consolidation processes in hubs: The hub-arrival-departure problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 298(3), pages 1051-1066.
    9. Maksim Barketau & Erwin Pesch, 2016. "An approximation algorithm for a special case of the asymmetric travelling salesman problem," International Journal of Production Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(14), pages 4205-4212, July.
    10. Konrad Stephan & Nils Boysen, 2017. "Crane scheduling in railway yards: an analysis of computational complexity," Journal of Scheduling, Springer, vol. 20(5), pages 507-526, October.
    11. Dirk Briskorn & Malte Fliedner & Martin Tschöke, 2021. "Vehicle Sequencing at Transshipment Terminals with Handover Relations," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 33(2), pages 477-494, May.
    12. Yan, Baicheng & Jin, Jian Gang & Zhu, Xiaoning & Lee, Der-Horng & Wang, Li & Wang, Hua, 2020. "Integrated planning of train schedule template and container transshipment operation in seaport railway terminals," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    13. Mateusz Cichenski & Florian Jaehn & Grzegorz Pawlak & Erwin Pesch & Gaurav Singh & Jacek Blazewicz, 2017. "An integrated model for the transshipment yard scheduling problem," Journal of Scheduling, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 57-65, February.
    14. Stefan Fedtke & Nils Boysen, 2017. "Gantry crane and shuttle car scheduling in modern rail–rail transshipment yards," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 39(2), pages 473-503, March.
    15. Roy, Debjit & van Ommeren, Jan-Kees & de Koster, René & Gharehgozli, Amir, 2022. "Modeling landside container terminal queues: Exact analysis and approximations," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 73-102.
    16. Li, Xinyan & Xie, Chi & Bao, Zhaoyao, 2022. "A multimodal multicommodity network equilibrium model with service capacity and bottleneck congestion for China-Europe containerized freight flows," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    17. Albareda-Sambola, Maria & Marín, Alfredo & Rodríguez-Chía, Antonio M., 2019. "Reformulated acyclic partitioning for rail-rail containers transshipment," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 277(1), pages 153-165.
    18. Nils Boysen & Malte Fliedner & Florian Jaehn & Erwin Pesch, 2013. "A Survey on Container Processing in Railway Yards," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(3), pages 312-329, August.

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