Patent Document ID: 20070005200
Application ID: 11374012
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method of planning the movement of plural railcars through a rail yard, the rail yard having tracks that are used as receiving tracks, classification tracks and departure tracks and the plural railcars arriving on inbound trains and departing on outbound trains, the plural railcars required to undergo a sequence of tasks to move through the rail yard, comprising: (a) receiving a plurality of trains in a rail yard, each train having a plurality of railcars received on a receiving track; (b) for each group of railcars on a receiving track, assigning an importance value for each railcar; (c) for each receiving track, aggregating the importance values for the railcars; and (d) scheduling the railcars to be moved to the classification tracks as a function of the aggregated importance values.