Marshalling Yard Research Articles

Rights of passage

Since 1989, eastern Europe has become the marshalling yard for all those who seek final refuge in the West. And the community on the ‘right’ side of the ‘green line’ that divides Europe as sharply as any wall ever did, is determined to keep them there

Method for evaluating the strength of retarding steps on a marshalling yard hump

The steadying of wagon movement down a hump is the focus of permanent interest of numerous researchers working on the planning of marshalling capacities or dealing with the evaluation of attendant devices and equipment. The complexity of the humping process is due to the existence of a large number of influential factors, mostly variable, many of them existing regardless of our will, and some of them being of a random character. Its investigation requires further research into the nature of particular factors and the quantification of their impact on the observed process.

Location of polygon vertices on circles and its application in transport studies

The paper deals with the problem how to locate a set of polygon vertices on given circles fulfilling some criteria of regularity of individual and composed polygons. Specifying the conditions we can obtain a lot of particular versions of this general problem. Some of them are already solved, the others are not. Applications of this theory can be found in scheduling of periodically repeating processes, e.g. in coordination of several urban lines on a common leg, in optimization of the rhythm of a marshalling yard etc.

Glare evaluation of tennis court f loodlighting

An international technical committee of the CIE has proposed a formula to predict the subjective impression of an outdoor floodlighting installation. The formula is based on appraisals of glare in football stadia and on football training grounds. It has since been validated for use in lighting airport aprons and railway marshalling yards. This report describes tests made to check the suitability of the formula for tennis court lighting. Very good agreement with the formula has been found.

Geotechnical aspects of the Bell Bay anchored retaining wall : Proc 4th Australia-New Zealand Conference on Geomechanics, Perth, Western Australia, 14–18 May 1984 V1, P294–299. Publ Barton: Inst of Engineers, 1984

This paper reviews the geotechnical aspects of the design and construction of an 8 m high, 350 m long sheet pile retaining wall supported by 340 permanent soil anchors. The wall was built to enable widening of a container terminal marshalling yard at the Port of Bell Bay, Tasmania. The port is situated on the Tamar River in an area where the river is confined by a 35 m high escarpment. The escarpment has a history of instability due to both natural regression and development of the area. Failures have generally occurred through fissured clays exposed at lower levels of the escarpment underlying a basalt cap. Apart from designing the wall to resist at-rest soil conditions in its completed state it was necessary to take full account of the staged method of construction and the influence of groundwater. Anchors used both bar and strand tendons and each anchor was required to have a minimum ultimate capacity of 800 kn. Each tendon was fully encased for corrosion protection. Construction monitoring was an essential part of the project. Load cells, inclinometers, measurement surveys and piezometers were used to assess the performance of the wall. (Author/TRRL)

Design and Development of Doppler Radar Outdoor Equipment for Railway Marshalling Yards

A solid-state Doppler Radar outdoor equipment has been designed and developed which can serve as an ideal replacement for existing outdoor equipments using vacuum tubes throughout for generating microwave power, for amplifying audio frequency Doppler signals and other applications. The performance of the equipment has been evaluated in—10°C to +80°C ambient temperature range and found to be quite satisfactory. The equipment has also been installed in a railway marshalling yard, and is working satisfactorily as speed sensor in an automatic closed-loop retarder control system.

Decentralized Automatic Rolling Speed Control System of a Hump Yard

The characteristics of the railway marshalling yard and the particular conditions of our railway transportation are stated. It is pointed out that the utilization of the decentralized automatic rolling speed control system is an effective road to carry out rolling speed automation of our marshalling yard. It is proposed that in the rolling speed controlling, the utilization of mathematical statistical method to find out the variable regularities of the running resistance of the car (or cut) prior to and post-retarder and the utilization of “tabic look-up” to determine the exit speed at retarder are both simple and effective in controlling. Besides, effect in operation of the system is also introduced.

Rapporteur's report, session 2: Other sources, including maintenance noise, freightyards, locomotive noise, station noise, etc.

The major sources of noise, excluding through train noise, were identified as locomotive noise, maintenance noise and freight marshalling noise. The biggest single problem appeared, from social survey data in the U.K., to be railway maintenance noise, which was difficult to control effectively. Locomotive noise was also a problem and it should be productive to diagnose the sources of noise before attempting noise control. Retarder noise, generated as squeal, was the major noise in freight marshalling yards. Again, before noise control can be effective, the mechanisms of the generation must be fully understood.

Automatic Classification Yard

The Basle-Muttenz II marshalling yard, opened for traffic towards the end of 1975, has a daily throughput of 4500 wagons. The process of splitting and forming of trains is fully automated. A real-time computer system controls the whole process using wagon data and with the help of clasp retarders, point operating apparatus and conveyors. The following tasks are carried out:1.Speed control of free-running trains of 2000 tons on a gradient of 7 mm/m by means of clasp retarders (approach) to obtain a constant, selectable speed2.Automatic route setting for the various cuts from the hump to the classification track3.Control of the speed of cuts between the hump and the classification track to avoid “catch-ups”, regardless of rolling characteristics4.Control of the speed of cuts in the classification sidings in such a way that firstly they impact on the wagons already standing on the track at a speed not exceeding 1,5 m/s, and secondly, that they can be easily coupled togetherThe controlling computer system receives signals from sensors placed in the track which indicate the momentary position of the rolling wagons, their weights, the speed of the approaching train and of the various cuts, as well as on the functional state of the “outdoor machinery”. From these inputs, the control commands to be issued to the switches, retarders and conveyors are computed according to different algorithms.The approach control must keep the train - an elastic medium - at a constant speed by means of three stages of clasp retarders. The control loop has been realized in the computer in form of “direct digital control”.In order to achieve a high availability of the control system, the computer has been duplicated, the second unit operating as a “hot-standby”. An alphanumeric display is provided to present information to the operating staff. The whole installation is operated with coded inputs through the keyboard of the display unit.The major benefits of this automatic system for a marshalling yard are high availability, rationalization, smoother handling of wagons and increased capacity.

Simulation of processes in a marshalling yard

An efficient control of processes in marshalling yards is an important part of railway cargo services. A model of a marshalling yard can be used as a support for a design of a yard, it can serve for planning tasks and can become a basis of an information system or a decision support system for a dispatcher. The article describes the model of a marshalling yard which is based on a general model of a transportation system but respects the special features of a railroad transport. The modelled processes include finding a path in a yard, dynamics of a motion of wagons in yard and problems of a simultaneous sorting. The article concentrates on technological processes in a yard which create only apart of a complete simulation model of a marshalling yard.

RBSIM- Simulation Model Of Marshalling YardOperation

This paper deals with a simulation model of technological procedures in a marshalling yard. The structure of the model and its properties are described from the point of view of a user. Attention is paid namely to its flexibility and built in capacities of cooperative solution of problems during the simulation run.

Methodical problems of economic efficiency calculations connected with choice of industrial building areas

documentation. The planning of the buildings for a new enterprise begins with the choice of the industrial area. The choice of an industrial area for the buildings to be erected and the search and inspections connected with it belongs to the complex work to be done by the planning organization, together with the institution interested. The task of the special commission constituted in order to choose a concrete industrial area for the buildings of the enterprise comprises the accurate determination of place and position of the complex of objects to be erected, which often consists of the buildings of the enterprise itself, and the heat and electric power plant it needs, the refining installations, automobile roads and railways, the railway marshalling yards, dwelling sections, etc. It is of essential economic importance to find a good solution to the problems connected with the choice of the building site for a new enterprise, since the nature of the area chosen influences the extent of the capital investment, the building time, and the operational costs. Thus, for example, a rugged terrain or poor supporting power of the ground often makes it necessary to erect the buildings and installations on complicated foundations, which essentially raise the building costs and time. A natural slight slope of the area may reduce the costs for the buildings of the circulating water supply and sewage systems, for the industrial-water pumping and sewage installations, and also the costs of the conveying of products and intermediate products. When the industrial area is far away from the sources of water, heat, and electric power supply, this can be a cause for increased production costs. When choosing the area, the following fundamental items should be taken into account: The dimensions of the territory for the works and the objects connected with it must be as small as possible, taking into account the rational density of buildings, avoiding superfluous reserve areas and too large distances between the installations, parks, buildings, and other parts of the works. The works must be as close as possible to the sources of water and energy supply and near districts where processed petroleum products are needed, in order to reduce the conveyance costs and distances. A reduction of the operational costs makes it necessary that the area, as to size and topology, permits an arrangement of the technological plants and other objects and buildings which corresponds to the production process and makes it possible to extend the works. The area must have a relatively smooth surface and an inclination which permits a natural flow-off of surface water, of the exhaust water to the blocks of circulating water supply, and the industrial waste to purifying installations. When the surface is not smooth, large-scale ground work may be necessary to obtain a suitable inclination; otherwise, if these waters and the industrial waste must be pumped off, the operational costs will be essentially higher. The ground of the area must be solid enough to carry the buildings without expensive foundations, the ground water level must remain below the cellars, tunnels, trenches, etc., since otherwise the costs for drainage stations must be added.

A step-driven digital magnetic recorder

The design and installation of a freight-car information sorting system for the. Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad was recently completed by the Stromberg-Carlson Company. The system, located in the Chicago, Ill., offices of the Rock Island Line, receives information on train make-up from several distant marshalling yards via teletypewriter links, records these messages, and sorts them. The Wheel Report Sorting System, as it is called, sorts the incoming information according to state of origin of shipment and state of destination, and routes this information to teletypewriters assigned to these states. In the course of designing the sorting system, a requirement developed for a means of storing multiple incoming messages efficiently, while sorting units are busy. The storage means must permit simultaneous recording and read-out at different rates, and must also operate intermittently on read-out due to switching of output during sorting. This service can be provided by paper-tape punches and readers with a buffer loop between. However, the information density on paper tape is low, thus creating a need for a physically large buffer storage. This fact, coupled with the need for continuously replenishing the tape, and the maintenance requirements of punches, led to the search for a more suitable means of storage. Magnetic recording presents the possibility of higher information density in addition to using a reusable medium. However, magnetic tape recorders of the conventional capstan-drive type do not generally provide for differing speeds of simultaneous recording and read-out with a buffer loop between for ���first in, first out��� storage. In addition, the requirement that the read-out be intermittent due to the setting up of connections to different printers is difficult to achieve without sacrificing information density for starting and braking space.

The Slide in Lodalen, October 6th, 1954

Synopsis The Paper describes a slide in a clay slope near a marshalling yard in Oslo in 1954. The slope was originally excavated about 30 years earlier during the expansion of the rail facilities. Since the slide took place apparently without any sudden external cause, it can be considered as the result of a gradual reduction in stability of the slope during the past years. Comprehensive field investigations and laboratory studies were carried out in order to determine the properties of the clay. Stability calculations by the φ = 0-analysis, based on values of the undrained shear strength which could be expected to exist in the slope immediately before the slide give a correct result, but involve a number of uncertain factors. It is, however, inappropriate to use this method for estimating the long-term stability. Stability analyses by Bishop's method, in terms of effective stresses based on the apparent cohesion and the apparent angle of friction, give approximately correct results. This method is, in addition, appropriate for estimating the long-term stability of the slope. L'article ci-après décrit un éboulement dans un versant d'argile près d'une gare de manutention dans la banlieue d'Oslo. L'éboulement, qui se produisit apparemment sans cause extétrieure déterminante, doit être considéré comme un phénomène à longue échéance, dû au fait que par suite du déblaiement en vue d'entendre les voies de manutention, le versant d'argile reçut une trop grande pente. I1 fut procédé à d'amples recherches du sol et essais de laboratoire pour déterminer les caractéristiques de l'argile en présence. Les calculs de stabilité: par les analyses φ = 0, basés sur les valeurs de l'effort de cisaillement non asséché, que l'on pouvait supposer exister dans le talus immédiatement avant l'éboulement, donnent un résultat correct, mais entraînent un nombre de facteurs incertains. Il est toutefois peu approprié d'employer cette méthode pour estimer la stabilité à long terme. Les analyses de stabilité par la méthode de Bishop en termes d'efforts effectifs basés sur la cohésion apparente et l'angle de frottement apparent donnent des résultats qui sont approximativement corrects. Cette méthode est de plus appropriée pour estimer la stabilitié à long terme du talus.