A Feasible Railyard Automation Solution for Freight Railroad operators

Heavy freight trains waiting to enter railyards, is a familiar sight across North America. Despite being on some of the busiest routes, majority of the railyards, lack automation, causing delays and accidents. This paper presents a solution to control train movements in and out of the railyards using Global Positioning System (GPS) data. The satellite detects the exact position of the train. The data from the train is sent to the PLC within railyard control house (RCH) to enable switch movements depending upon vacant storage track. Once the switches are confirmed locked in their desired positions, a confirmation is sent to the locomotive pilot to drive forward into the empty track. While exiting the railyard and entering the mainline, the locomotive communicates directly with the yard control house to enable exit switch movement. The aim of this paper is to establish a base case upon which higher degrees of automation could be built upon. Automation using GPS data, PLCs with interlocked programming and switch machines makes the railyard more operationally efficient and safer, limiting over the track manual intervention.