CSX is a US railroad company that operates about 21,000 route miles (34,000 km). AnyLogic allows the railroad industry users to simulate line-of-road, terminal, and yard problems. The following three projects, completed by CSX in 2014, covered a variety of tasks that were solved using AnyLogic software.
The port of Le Havre, France, needed support for construction of new multimodal terminal. The issue that required simulation was supporting containers transfer between rail trains/river barges and other existing terminals, which transferred these containers to and from sea transport.
The BNSF Railway Company is one of the largest freight railroad networks in the United States. The company has 32,500 miles of track in 28 states and three Canadian provinces, and more than 8,000 locomotives. Expanding the company’s existing facilities, and developing new facilities in intermodal segments, would require making large capital investments. To help evaluate various options of capacity expansion in major facilities, and make data-informed decisions, BNSF developed container terminal simulation models of the Corwith and Hobart facilities.
Alstom is a global leader in the transportation sector. The company offers trains, signaling, maintenance services, as well as integrated transport systems. Among Alstom’s products are the TGV and Eurostar high-speed trains. The company has 105 sites with more than 34,000 employees worldwide. Its net income is €475 mln. Alstom considers innovation to be crucial in meeting the mobility challenges of the future. Together, with SimPlan, they agreed on developing a digital decision support system for train fleet maintenance management.
The Port of Long Beach, California, planned to invest up to $1 billion dollars in its Pier B Yard rail facility. TranSystems, with over 25 years of experience in the transport and supply chain space, worked with the port to quantify system requirements to meet capacity goals and to gain stakeholder consensus. Modeling the rail system of the port was necessary to demonstrate to the stakeholders the required changes.
The public transportation company employed PwC Australia to develop a solution that could provide a customer-centric view of their railway infrastructure and help the company understand the current incident effects on rail network operations and how to improve the situation. PwC consultants decided to build a model of the transportation network that would simulate train movements, incidents, and customers at stations and in trains.
Advisian, an independent consulting arm of the WorleyParsons Group, with subsidiaries in 19 countries, was tasked with modeling one of Australia’s largest rail maintenance centers. This center is used for the planned maintenance, repair, and stabling of both regional and suburban rolling stock. The depot suffered from considerable congestions and the managing company wanted to find out the reasons and work out the techniques for congestion elimination. The managing company also wanted to test train depot design at its maximum capacity, taking into account infrastructure constraints and optimize fleet mix.
Aurizon is an Australia’s largest rail freight operator, managing more than 700 locomotives and more than 16,000 wagons. Aurizon is widely engaged in coal, iron ore, and mineral transportation. In order to increase operational efficiency the company decided to move one of their rail yards to other town. This rail yard was mainly engaged in wagon and locomotive maintenance and locomotive preparation.
In CIS regions, passenger railway traffic is a highly specific field. Suburban railway routes are often cut due to their unprofitability. This may have a negative impact, not only on the passengers, but also on the social and economic conditions in the regions. The Russian Central Federal District authorities faced the rail routes reduction problem. They decided to launch alternative bus routes simultaneously with the cancellation of the railway routes in order to reduce adverse impacts.
The 2018 FIFA World Cup is in Russia, and in preparation for the event, the extensive rail network of the enormous country had to prepare for increased traffic. RZD, the largest rail network operator in Russia, conducted an event preparedness assessment involving 31 railway stations across the eleven host cities of: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Sochi, Saransk, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Volgograd, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, and Yekaterinburg. The project was contracted out to IRTS, a company specializing in the development of transport systems.