Automatic Humping

a system of integrated mechanization and automation of the technological process of railroad hump yards. The process of separation of rolling stock in a hump yard is automated by various systems, including automatic control of the rolling-down speed of rolling stock, automatic centralized switching controls, automatic preselection of the speed of hump marshaling, and remote control of the switch engine.

An automatic speed control maintains the necessary intervals between uncoupled cars, so that one car cannot overtake another in the release area of the yard, and distance traveled by cars, so that they approach other cars standing on the tracks at the correct coupling speed (1.5 m/sec). Special devices in speed-control systems measure the movement characteristics and weight of each car and the open length of a hump track onto which the car is moving. According to this data, a computer calculates the speed at which a car leaves the automatically controlled braking areas (car retarders); monitoring devices compare the computed speeds with actual speeds as reported by velocity radar equipment, and appropriate commands are then sent to the mechanisms that control the retarders.

An automatic centralized switching control system provides automatic switching along the path taken by the railroad cars. It may function in the programmed mode, in which the routes taken by the rolling stock are prerecorded on punched cards that are read when the train is being broken up, or the route mode, in which the paths taken by the cars are established immediately before they approach the main switch of the humping yard. To maintain communication between the moving cars and the switch control equipment and to prevent the throwing of a switch while a car is passing over it, the entire release area of the yard is divided into short individual sections (rail links) that cannot be overlapped by the wheels of a freight car.

Systems for the automatic preselection of hump marshaling speed compute and set the maximum permissible speed of rolling stock on the hump at the moment of separation of each car. Long segments or cars whose paths divide at main switches are given a higher speed than in any other case. This makes it possible to increase the average marshaling speed and, consequently, the operating capacity of the hump yard. In addition, this type of system provides route programming for switching control systems and yields on digital indicators data concerning the number of cars contained in the two next series that are approaching the hump.

A remote-control switch-engine system is designed for the automatic execution of the settings transmitted by the marshaling speed control system over radio communications channels and to provide automatic control of the switch engine. Remote control makes it possible to move the locomotive in a desired direction and to regulate its speed or stop it in accordance with the commands received.