Shunting yard operations: Theoretical aspects and applications

Nils Boysen, Malte Fliedner, Florian Jaehn and Erwin Pesch

European Journal of Operational Research, 2012, vol. 220, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Almost ever since freight has been transported via rail, shunting yards (also called classification or marshaling yards) are operated in order to separate freight trains and reassemble new trains. The efficient use of shunting yards has a deep impact on the efficiency and reliability of rail freight services. Thus, much research on shunting yards has been published, starting from the 1950s. Lately, several publications mostly focusing on the sorting procedures have livened up research on shunting yards. This paper reviews the literature on the operational processes at shunting yards over the last 40years and discusses the operational challenges of freight transshipment. The approaches are classified according to different sorting strategies which allows an easy access to the models for both, researchers and practitioners. The paper concludes with an overview on future research challenges.

Keywords: Shunting yards; Classification yards; Container transshipment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377221712000811
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:220:y:2012:i:1:p:1-14

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2012.01.043

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Operational Research is currently edited by Roman Slowinski, Jesus Artalejo, Jean-Charles. Billaut, Robert Dyson and Lorenzo Peccati

More articles in European Journal of Operational Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().