Yard Solutions
Efficient operation is all about fluidity, keeping freight cars moving on schedule and to the right destinations. Currently, cars can spend up to two-thirds of their transit time standing idle in yards. That’s a lot of lost throughput—and targeted reduction of idle time creates a tremendous opportunity for improving bottom line profits.
If you could reduce average pullback time by just five minutes, how much profit can be generated? Some studies indicate millions can be added to your bottom line by saving just five minutes per pull. RailComm’s Domain Operations Controller (DOC®) system has been measured to improve average pullback times by 15-20 minutes in some yards, generating an incredible return on your capital investment.
RailComm Integrated Automation provides railroads with a roadmap to continuously improve yard fluidity. The foundation of the roadmap is our industry leading control system architecture, centered on RailComm DOC® technology. The roadmap allows for piecemeal adoption of the Integrated Automation architecture, always deriving rapid return on your investment, and never creating a situation where your investment becomes obsolete. The elements of Integrated Automation can be easily applied over time, as capital budgets allow, and the more you invest, the greater the return will become.
The result will be a yard with all fixed and mobile assets interconnected through data communications. As each point is connected, it becomes a part of a larger whole, and the whole enterprise benefits. Connected points create real-time status information that is utilized to optimize the cut, the yard, and indeed the railroad enterprise.
RailComm Yard Control Solutions
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- Remote control of an individual power switch, derail device, flagging device, heaters, gates, lights…you name it, we will control it.
- Automatically line routes through our Stacked Routing feature interfaced to your car management system.
- Remote control from the tower workstation, from strategically located field panels, on-board controller and/or from handheld controllers.
- Many yards already have incorporated power switch machines, either as a stand-alone “convenience” switch or as a part of an existing control network. This is an ideal situation as an even greater return on your investment is possible. We are experts at converting your legacy system into the Integrated Automation architecture.
- Automatically block/unblock tracks for mechanical car inspections.
- Detect and indicate shove track status.
- Automatically apply blue flag protection for mainline re-fueling operations.
- Warn track crew of approaching track vehicles.
- Train-Engine-Car-Crew (TECC) assets are automatically tracked as they move through the yard.
- Automatically calculate remaining capacity on every yard track.
- System automatically displays real-time car locations.
- Quickly locate specific cars through dynamic yard maps.
- Coordinate all tasks and generate real-time work orders.
- Communicate work orders directly to each crew, no more paper lists.
- Feed real-time operating data into tactical planning tool to augment decision support.
- Generate tactical analysis of the effects of yard changes on the entire railroad system.
- See solutions to local problems in the broader context, to make changes that will benefit both the yard and the entire line.
- Help executives and upper-level managers understand the effectiveness of people, equipment and strategies across the enterprise.
- Improve training opportunities with knowledge of actual yard performance.
- Construct dynamic yard efficiency, productivity, safety and operational performance metrics.
- Use data mining to create rich, analytical reports using real-time data and Key Performance Indicator dashboards.
