Integrating yards, network and optimisation models towards real-time rail freight yard operations

This paper describes the state of advance-ment achieved in the OptiYard research project in the use of optimisation algorithms in interaction with microsimula-tion of the rail-yard and surrounding network towards real-time yard management and communication with the net-work. Two case studies, a hump marshalling yard (mainly Single Wagon Load traffic) and a flat shunting yard (main-ly intermodal traffic), were represented with state-of-the art microsimulation models, combined with innovative opti-misation algorithms. Some specialistic information on the nature of the models is provided. However, the focus is ori-ented to railway engineers, with a description of the inter-actions between the models in producing outputs that are useful both to the yard dispatcher (decisions on staff, track, locomotive assignment, order of operations) and the infras-tructure manager of the surrounding network (expected times of departure, availability of tracks in the yard).