Conference Agenda

This paper addresses a practical operational challenge at Nongkhai Station of the State Railway of Thailand, where both passenger and freight services operate within a shared station environment. The station plays an important role not only in domestic railway transportation, but also in the broader logistics network of the Greater Mekong Subregion due to its proximity to the Thailand–Lao PDR border. In recent years, cross-border railway logistics between Thailand, Lao PDR, and China have become increasingly significant under regional economic connectivity initiatives. Nongkhai Station therefore functions as an important gateway for international freight movement, particularly for agricultural products, consumer goods, and containerized cargo transported through the Laos–China Railway connections. This growing logistics role increases operational complexity within the station, where freight activities must coexist with regular passenger services under limited infrastructure capacity.

In such an operational environment, shunting operations are essential for managing trainset and locomotive movements, including coupling and decoupling activities, passenger boarding and alighting, freight loading and unloading, as well as the immigration process. These processes are highly interdependent and constrained by limited track availability, requiring proper coordination to avoid operational conflicts, delays, and disruptions that may propagate across the wider railway network.

From a methodological perspective, the study first reviews existing railway timetabling and visualization tools to support the analysis of shunting operations. However, it is found that current tools are not fully suitable for representing detailed station yard-level shunting processes in a manner that is both operationally meaningful and sufficiently practical for the case study. While some tools provide timetable visualization or microscopic simulation capabilities, they either lack detailed focus on shunting activities or require extensive infrastructure and operational data that are not currently available. Consequently, the study adopts a conceptual analytical approach rather than relying on a specific software tool.

The paper further proposes a graphical representation of shunting operation patterns within the station along with the shunting activity list which provides standardization of the activity as a norm acting as checklist for the scheduler to reassure the overall schedule. This visualization illustrates train movement sequences, coupling and decoupling activities, and track occupancy over time in a structured format. The approach enhances understanding of dynamic station yard behavior and assists in identifying potential operational conflicts more clearly, particularly in the absence of suitable existing visualization tools. Overall, the study highlights the importance of railway shunting operations as a logistics-related scheduling problem closely connected to timetable reliability, operational efficiency, and cross-border freight transportation performance.

This paper provides the first contribution on track utilization via track occupancy chart and the second contribution on standardization of the shunting activities. Track utilization gives insight data to scheduler in term of current and statistics data to know the utilization rate of each track to do further data analysis. Standardized shunting activity list helps schedulers as checklist of the activity within the station more systematically Both contributions are to enhance proper shunting operation management within the station yard and for foundation of future disruptions.