Comparison of Various Freight Train Dispatching Policies for Indian Railways

Abstract

This paper deals with freight train dispatching policies that minimize the total costs incurred in the freight operation of Indian Railways. This study is considered essential as a substantial amount of delay is caused at the marshalling yards in waiting for the freight cars for a particular destination in the formation of freight trains. A set of four different dispatching policies, namely dynamic programming approach, economic lot size approach, seventy car policy, and current operating policy, were considered and the delays under each were computed using the suggested methodologies and the data collected from the Kanpur Marshalling Yard, India. Evaluation of the policies indicate that dynamic programming approach results in the least amount of delay as compared with all the other policies (a reduction of 5.7%–38.3% of delay per car over the seventy car policy and much higher savings when compared to the current operating policy). The reduction of delay under economic lot size policy is in the order of 0.5%–46.4% when compared to the seventy car policy. Finally, simulation is suggested for further insight into dispatching operation of yards.