Interline Service Management (ISM) supports rail industry agreements for handling freight and freight cars among participating rail carriers. It includes the key physical trip events of single-line or multi-line (more than one railroad) shipments, interchange data, and arrival and departure data among other data points.

The complete trip plan is furnished to each participating carrier in the route for its use and is stored in the Forward and Store central system database to support query, monitoring, and research functions by customers and rail carriers.