Analysis and Evaluation of Double-Ended Flat-Shunted Yard Performance Employing Two Yard Crews
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 137, Issue 5
Abstract
The yards are facilities that reassemble inbound freight train cars into outbound freight trains. These facilities play an essential role for providing the freight transportation service by rail, however, they are nonrevenue producing elements for the railway freight companies and therefore keeping them unutilized is not acceptable. In this paper, a double-ended flat-shunted yard has been studied by discrete-event-based simulations. The results obtained demonstrate significantly low utilization levels of the subsystems of this yard. Therefore, a possible reduction of floating resources is investigated.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge Mr. Philip Mortimer of TruckTrain Developments Ltd. for proofreading the manuscript and providing interesting comments and suggestions; the planning staff at Department of Planning and Control, CP Carga and the operational staff at Entroncamento yard for providing data and validating the results obtained; and the editor in chief and the anonymous reviewers for generously giving their time to referee the manuscript of this paper and provide valuable comments and recommendations.
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© 2011 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Jun 12, 2009
Accepted: Aug 18, 2010
Published online: Sep 15, 2010
Published in print: May 1, 2011
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