Automated Shunting

Description

A set of measures to enable fully autonomous (unattended - GoA 4) shunting movements in terminals, marshalling yards, ports, sidings and other areas not covering main line tracks. The system must ensure safe, smooth, efficient and reliable shunting.

Use Case

Any shunting movements in described areas that are required to split or form train consists and to pick up or deliver wagons from/to customer sidings, workshops etc. In particular, the system must support the following actions:

1. Approaching the rolling stock to be shunted and coupling it. The locomotive must be capable of identifying the distance and position of the rolling stock approached (to which it will be coupled to) independently without any external assistance – it is only known on which track particular vehicles are located and which vehicles must be moved. External data about the approached rolling stock location may be used but it must not be a prerequisite.
2. Movement of rolling stock to a required location. The system must consider the length of the wagon rake shunted so that the consist is moved to a right position to stay clear of turnouts or other critical points on infrastructure to enable next movements.
3. Decoupling of the locomotive from the shunted vehicles. The locomotive proceeds to the next task.
4. Pushing of wagons in hump shunting over the hump
5. Pushing wagons together in classification tracks, in case there are gaps between wagons, at a safe speed
6. Push-shunting movements with passive (no GoA 4 equipment) vehicles in front. This use case is the major challenge. The system must have a predefined process in place how such shunting movements can be accomplished safely (no collisions) and efficiently (fast enough). In any case the system must be capable of identifying the distance and position of the rolling stock approached.

Preconditions

The system consists of three major cornerstones:

1. Locomotives or other rolling stock capable of GoA 4 operations, including location and obstacle detection systems to enable reliable, safe and precise shunting movements
2. Wagons and other rolling stock equipped with digital automatic couplers (DAC) that can be coupled and decoupled automatically – benefits without DAC are remarkable only for hump shunting as otherwise manual couplings make the presence of personnel anyway inevitable.
3. Detailed specifications of the shunting area to enable such operations
4. Shunting management tools to plan and optimize shunting tasks and to forward shunting commands to the locomotives

 

Dependencies

The efficiency of automatic shunting is largely dependent on the implementation of digital automatic couplers (DAC) which would make the continuous presence of shunting personnel unnecessary. This is also a potential prerequisite to lower the technical standards for sensor technology, thus lowering the cost, because DAC avoids the need of the personnel to walk on the track or go between wagons. Therefore, safety risks are reduced and the respective mitigation measures become partly unnecessary. However, it is still critical to streamline remaining work processes that require manual labour, such as placement of brake shoes (i.e. scotches), release of brakes before hump shunting and wagon inspection. Naturally, also these processes could potentially be (at least partly) automated as well. Whereas shunting locomotives that are operating only in a certain terminal or marshalling yard can shift to automatic operation more simply due to the limited space that it must operate on, any movements including a mixture with main line running still require staffed operation, as long as main line operations are not automized. Therefore, the benefits of such mixed operation that limits GoA 4 to sidings only are rather limited. It is likely that it is financially more reasonable to retain the current practice of remotely controlled locomotives for such tasks, given that personnel is anyway present. However, as soon as automated main line running becomes possible, the benefits are remarkable due to large savings achieved in otherwise rather costly last and first mile operations.

Planned Steps

1. Implementation of GoA 4 for hump shunting in pushing locomotives, including the approach to the wagon rake, the pushing and the turnaround to the next wagon rake – currently GoA 2 mainly used. A locomotive driver is not needed any more.
2. Implementation of GoA 4 for the whole hump shunting process – includes automatic decoupling of wagons on the hump in addition to point 1, as soon as DAC is implemented. Avoids the manual labour of loosening the screw couplers and decoupling wagons.
3. Automation of shunting in confined areas for all movements where the GoA 4 capable rolling stock is used. Covers terminals, marshalling yards, larger industrial sidings or port areas that require extensive shunting.
4. Potential future step currently out of scope: implement automated shunting as a general operational procedure once automated running on main line tracks is possible

Evaluation

• Frank Kschonsak on 25 June

This point can be handled more in detail, if needed. We have specialized EVU within the group, which core business is “shunting” in onsite-areas.