Rail terminal operations

Abstract

Strengthening the railway system is among the top priorities of the long-term transport agendas issued by many national and international authorities. Rail transportation relieves the overloaded road networks and is preferred based on its reduced environmental impact. An important driver to increase the attractiveness of the railway system is to establish more efficient train handling processes in existing railway terminals. Relevant terminals are traditional shunting yards, where railcars are rearranged to trains via a system of switches and shunting tracks, and intermodal terminals, where containers are exchanged between trains and trucks by huge gantry cranes. In all these terminals, multiple stakeholders (e.g., train operators, forwarding companies and terminal operators) and various equipment types (e.g., locomotives, railcars, cranes, containers) have to be coordinated, so that the application of quantitative approaches for planning the operations in rail terminals is highly advisable.B Nils Boysen nils.boysen@uni-jena.de