A survey on container processing in railway yards: Decision problems, optimization procedures and research challenges

In spite of extraordinary support programs initiated by the European Union and other national authorities, the percentage of overall freight traffic moved by train is in steady decline. This development is driven by the fact that macro-economic benefits of rail traffic, such as relief of overloaded road networks and reduced environmental impacts, are countervailed by severe disadvantages from the perspective of the shipper, e.g., low average delivery speed and general lack of reliability. Attracting a higher share of freight traffic on rail requires a more efficient freight handling in railway yards, which includes technical innovations as well as the development of suited decision support systems. This paper reviews container processing in railway yards from an operational research perspective and analyzes basic decision problems for the two most important yard types, namely conventional rail-road and modern rail-rail transshipment yards. Existing literature is reviewed and open research challenges are identified.