CONSTRUCTING RAILROAD BLOCKING PLANS TO MINIMIZE HANDLING COSTS

On major domestic railroads, a typical general merchandise shipment is composed of a set of individual cars that all share a common origin and destination (OD). The shipment, or commodity, may pass through many classification yards on its route from origin to destination. At these yards, the incoming traffic, which may consist of several shipments, is reclassified (sorted and grouped togehter to be placed on outgoing trains. On average, each reclassification results in a one day delay for the shipment. In addition, the classification process is labor and capital intensive because many workers and large quantities of equipment are needed to sort the traffic, and construction and maintenance of large yards is necessary to handle the sorting task. Over the years, railroads have developed blocking plans that dictate which blocks should be built at each individual yard and which traffic should be assigned to each block. The model developed here is intended as a strategic decision-making tool. The authors develop a column generation, branch-and-bound algorithm in which attractive paths for each shipment are generated by solving a shortest path problem. The authors implement the algorithm and find near-optimal solutions in about one hour for the blocking problem of a large domestic railroad, in which the paths that shipments may take in the physical network are restricted.

• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/oclc/1767714
• Corporate Authors:

  Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)

  901 Elkridge Landing Road, Suite 400
  Linthicum, MD  United States  21090-2909
• Authors:
  • Newton, H N
  • Barnhart, Cynthia
  • Vance, P H
• Publication Date: 1998-11

Language

• English

Media Info

• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: p. 330-345
• Serial:
  • Transportation Science
  • Volume: 32
  • Issue Number: 4
  • Publisher: Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
  • ISSN: 0041-1655
  • Serial URL: http://transci.journal.informs.org/

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Algorithms; Blocking; Classification yards; Handling characteristics; Networks; Railroad terminals; Walkways
• Uncontrolled Terms: Handling; Transportation networks
• Subject Areas: Freight Transportation; Railroads; Terminals and Facilities;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00757957
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Dec 14 1998 12:00AM