Client
Aurizon is 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. The company is the world’s largest rail transporter of export coal from mine to port. In order to increase operational efficiency, the company decided to move one of their rail yards to another town. This rail yard was mainly engaged in wagon and locomotive maintenance and locomotive preparation.
Problem
Aurizon approached Evans & Peck consulting company with the following task:
- To determine the capacity of a rail maintenance yard and if additional roads were required when additional services were moved to the yard.
- To develop the model in a relativity short time when compared to current modelling methods used at Aurizon.
- To build a model which can be reused in a larger network model if required.
Solution
The consultants employed AnyLogic’s Rail Yard Library for simulating operations within the rail yard (including locomotive preparation, locomotive maintenance, wagon maintenance, reliability examinations of trains, wagon stowage, locomotive stowage and passing traffic). They had to construct the model in a modular fashion to allow components to be reused and the yard model to be connected / incorporated into other models.
The model permitted the testing of the following:
- Train configurations
- Train movements within the yard
- Track utilisation
- Facility utilisation
- Stowage times within the yards
- Scheduling of activities
- Impact on mainline services
The model is a good demonstration of AnyLogic’s ability to build complex models without extensive Java coding.
Results
The model was used to determine:
- If additional roads were required within the rail yard
- If operations at surrounding yards could be moved to the yard in question
- What effect the shifting of these operations had on the Train Master Plan
- How activities can be coordinated better within the yard
The model was constructed in a way that allows it to be placed into a larger network model, which Aurizon is developing with the assistance of Evans & Peck.
Watch Martin van Holten from Evans & Peck presenting this project in detail at The AnyLogic Conference 2012 or download his presentation:
