The Automatic Generation of Transhipment Plans for a Train-Train Terminal: Application to the Spanish-French Border.

The enormous potential of combined transport (rail-road) makes rail the main alternative to the transport of freight by road in the Europe. Unfortunately, the European railway network is strongly fragmented, having different bottleneck points. This paper presents research that centers on the transhipment tasks in the Port Bou terminal. This terminal is a bottleneck point because of the different track gauges of the Spanish and French railways. In order to optimize the use of gantry cranes and the means available for train-train transhipment, a linear programming model that allows for the automation of container transhipment plans is proposed. An Analytic Decision Support application is used to develop the model. As a result of this research it can be concluded that the problem can be solved through linear programming and the model proposed could be transferred both to other transhipment terminals and to cargo terminals in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]