Patent ID: 7742849

Claim:
A method for switching railcars in a railway switchyard, wherein the railway switchyard includes, a switching queue containing a plurality of railcars awaiting to be switched, a plurality of classification tracks and a switch for switching railcars in the switching queue to the classification tracks, the method including: i. determining space available for receiving railcars from a train block in individual ones of the classification tracks, the determining being performed by using a computer programmed to perform the determining wherein: 1. the train block includes a plurality of railcars and at least one of the railcars is enroute to the railway switch yard at a time the determining is performed; 2. the at least one of the railcars being characterized by an expected time of arrival (ETA), the ETA providing an estimate of the time at which the at least one railcar is expected to be present in the railway switchyard; 3. the determining includes inputting in the computer first data indicative of the ETA and processing the first data with the computer to generate second data, the second data indicative of the space available for receiving railcars from the first train block; ii. selecting a classification track amongst the plurality of classification tracks at least in part on the basis of the second data; iii. switching railcars from the train block in the selected classification track.