Strategic consideration of the impact of automotive freight wagons on branch lines

With regard to climate change, it is necessary to promote modal shifts to the low-CO2 transport mode of rail. One approach to this is to make existing modes of transport more attractive in order to create incentives to switch. In the autoSHUNTING project, in addition to the use of an automated shunting unit, it was also investigated how the use of a self-driving freight wagon can be implemented. For this purpose, an existing daily schedule of a shunting crew was analysed. From this, conclusions were drawn as to how a self-propelled freight wagon can be operated on a branch line. In order to consider the effects of the self-propelled freight wagon on the operation, an operation simulation was created. A specific branch line was chosen for this simulation. The respective requirements of the self-propelled freight wagon were included in the simulation. For this purpose, different operations in industrial sidings were carried out and also crossings by passenger trains were considered. It was shown that the use of a self-propelled freight wagon with a speed of 10 km/h is possible in the specific case of application and does not significantly restrict operations. It can therefore be seen that, in a subsequent step, the development of a self-propelled freight wagon may have potential.