Determining fixed crane areas in rail–rail transshipment yards

Abstract

To enable rapid container transshipment between freight trains in modern rail–rail transshipment yards efficient computerized scheduling procedures are indispensable. This paper proposes a dynamic programming approach, which determines yard areas for gantry cranes, so that the workload is evenly spread among cranes and, thus, train processing is accelerated. In a straightforward simulation of transshipment yard operations, the effect of optimal crane areas vs. equally sized areas is studied, the latter being a common real-world policy. The results indicate a remarkable speed-up of train processing if optimal crane areas are applied.