Method for calculating the maximum number of railway cars in a cut

Abstract

A shunting process in hump yards has a number of technical and technological constraints, one of which is the maximum permissible number of cars in a cut. This constraint increases the number of cuts, time of shunting, operating costs of car handling operations in a railways network, while reducing the safety level of classification. The purpose of the paper is to maximize the handling capacity of hump yards by reasonably increasing the permissible length of cuts. The current methods of calculation do not take into account some features of classification operations with long cuts of cars. The proposed method is based on probability calculations and simulation modeling of the shunting process in hump yards. The authors identified the critical factors limiting the maximum permissible number of cars in a cut and developed a method to determine this limitation.