Purpose. The purpose of this article is to carry out a historical analysis of the development of methods for simulation of railcars rolling from sorting humps and to determine directions for their improvement in order to solve the problems facing the railway transport of Ukraine today. Methodology. The research was carried out on the basis of the processing of literary sources of the library of the Ukrainian State University of Science and Technology, as well as scientometric databases Scopus and Google Scholar. Findings. The origin of the methods for simulation of railcars rolling from sorting humps took place at the beginning of the 20th century, when they were separated from the methods of traction calculations. Until the middle of the 20th century, the simulation of the railcars rolling was carried out in order to solve the problems of designing sorting humps. This period is characterized by the simulation of the rolling of individual curs under known conditions. The complication of the simulation methods of the sorting humps operation is connected with the tasks of automating the control of the trains breaking-up. For this purpose, the tasks of establishing the laws and parameters of the distribution of random resistance values acting on the cuts, taking into account changes in the longitudinal profile of the track under the cuts, modeling the operation of brake retarders and their control systems, etc., were solved. Originality. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that, on the basis of a historical analysis of the development of methods for simulation of railcars rolling from sorting humps, the connections between the working conditions of railway transport and the methods of modeling rolling processes are established. Practical value. The practical value of the results lies in the fact that they indicate the need to develop methods development of methods for simulation of railcars rolling from sorting humps in conditions of inaccurate information about their running characteristics and rolling conditions. This will make it possible to increase the efficiency of the sorting humps operation without significant capital investments in their control systems.