New approaches to enhancing efficiency of freight railway stations performance within industrial enterprises

Abstract

At present time freight stations operation is complicated by raised dynamics of production and transport processes. Under the given handling capacity, this circumstance affects duration of processing of inbound and internal flow of freight cars. In connection with the abovementioned, the article covers new approaches to the analysis and evaluation of operating characteristics, and designing of railway freight stations within industrial enterprises. These approaches base on the system adaptation of the railway freight stations structural layouts and parameters of technical facilities to new working conditions and production demands. As the criterion of optimization of freight station operation, the index of “transportation work” (freight car-hour) was offered. It allows differentiating the elemental flows of freight cars from the overall flow of freight cars at the freight station. It also allows identifying structure, volumes and other parameters of train operation (duration of processing measured in freight car-hours, interpretational and technological idle time denoting the location and the reason for their occurrence). Moreover, the analysis and evaluation of yard operation is offered to be carried out via handling capacity balance, which illustrates the relation between the overall volume of transportation work and the amount of trains handled at the station. This allows establishing additional transportation work and makes it possible to evaluate the real (objective) necessity in throughput and handling capacity of station facilities in particular, and the station in general. The operating characteristics that have been examined determine the new methodical approaches to designing of composition-and-structural layouts and parameters of industrial freight stations. As the basis for optimization of the station, the certain method of morphological analysis and synthesis of technical decisions can be accepted, with its modification due to the specificity of industrial freight stations operation