In a year of challenges, the teams at Railinc delivered one successful outcome after another. E. Allen West, President & CEO of Railinc
Speed, accuracy, specificity – these are just a few of the priorities that Railinc is able to address when we leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to develop new solutions for customer pain points once considered unsolvable.
Learn More ›2021 was another successful year for the AAR products and services. Jerry Vaughn, Vice President, AAR Product Management
The adoption of electronic air brake slips (eABS) has been a fundamental shift in regulatory...
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In 2021, Railinc released several user-level enhancements to Positive Train Control...
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For nearly ten years, the industry has invested considerable resources and funding...
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This project provided Class I railroads with support for eABS and regulatory modernization...
This project will lead to significantly increased sharing of HBD data – which facilitates data transparency, activity and visibility for inbound...
This project supported Class I railroads in reviewing and prioritizing how to address and standardize monitoring by providing an assessment of derailment data...
At TransmetriQ, critical thinkers from product management, design, software development and operations work together with our customers to develop innovative solutions for their toughest transportation challenges.
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Railinc’s business is keeping the businesses of North America on track and moving forward. Our outsized impact on the safety and efficiency of the freight rail fleet gives Railinc employees a strong purpose for the work they do every day. Watch the video below to hear what that means to them and why they love working at Railinc.
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“This past year we were able to develop new revenue sources, explore new technologies, complete our industry projects and continue to serve our customers at the highest level.”
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These solutions are helping to make our transportation infrastructure safer and are helping railroads and their customers deliver resources and consumer products more efficiently and at a lower cost. Railinc is the largest single source of real-time accurate interline rail data for the North American railroad system.
"The teams continue to focus on supporting rail industry business processes through our support of critical industry applications, system maintenance and long-term industry-driven programs."
The adoption of electronic air brake slips (eABS) has been a fundamental shift in regulatory modernization for the freight rail industry. By allowing railroads to monitor mileage at an individual equipment level, eABs have driven a reduction in additional manual labor and inspections needed for verification purposes. Railinc continued to move the regulatory modernization needle in 2021 by dually supporting the needs of both North America’s Class I and short line Class II and Class III railroads. Highlights of Railinc’s data quality improvement work for Class I railroads included refined equipment location reporting, a newly introduced projected mileage functionality and the aggregation of repair data submitted by railroads to correlate intervals between inspection and repair completion. Separately, leveraging the prior year’s web application development work, Railinc also launched a new mobile application for short line railroad users, a welcomed solution for submitting inspection data and querying mileage. Comprehensively, these accomplishments will drive improved efficiency for railroads, which results in additional time- and cost-savings.
Through Railinc’s efforts to aggregate data in 2021, additional opportunities to receive and provide analysis of Class I-provided data sources have been identified and will be pursued at the benefit of these railroads in 2022. Railinc will also work toward its goal of involving a larger number of short line railroads, so that it may enable better decision making around maintenance and repair tasks industry-wide, without also requiring a significant increase in manual work.
In 2021, Railinc released several user-level enhancements to Positive Train Control Interoperable Lifecycle Management to support interoperability, regulatory compliance and ease of use for participating railroads. The introduction of user-level time zone control – the first release of individual-selected time zone settings within a Railinc application ever – along with establishment of customizable email notification filtering and daily email reports containing 24-hour overviews were several of the user-requested releases to support efficiency among railroads. Railinc also prioritized custom reporting development in 2021, specifically leveraging the Tableau interface to allow users to track changes and make comparisons between versions. By introducing new user-level enhancements, railroads now have greater control over what information is received, when it is shared and in what format, so that individual railroads may tailor their settings to best utilize the platform and maintain interoperability with other stakeholders in the industry.
Railinc will grow its investment into user-level enhancements by releasing independent deployment capabilities for railroads in 2022. Once live, individual users will have full control over whether or not to deploy specific versions of software, independent of choices made by other railroads, and will also have control over when said deployment takes place. This will allow railroads to refine decision-making processes by the individual user. Additionally, Railinc will also focus on developing additional dashboard enhancements over the year.
As the industry’s needs evolve, the Gateway Operations Services Program maintains its focus on supporting current industry initiatives while helping to explore new growth opportunities. 2021 saw the onboarding of system-wide GIS data for all Class I railroads, a significant milestone for Railinc’s Location Management program that will enable track-level visibility for the entire North American rail network. Additionally, Railinc successfully delivered GIS updates for the majority of the Class I railroads to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), allowing for continued improvements to the North American Railroad Network (NARN) utilized throughout the industry for routing and mileage calculations.
Clear Path-focused accomplishments in 2021 included a partnership with Railinc’s Positive Train Control Interoperable Train Sheet team to perform an assessment of industry bulletin processes and explore the potential value of a centralized bulletin support system, the addition of new messaging capabilities to enable digital bulletin delivery, and the development of data receipt processes to support train ID matching solutions using updated EDI messaging. Application maintenance activities were focused on data quality and user interface improvements, as well as refinements in the management of train delay location data to support Chicago Transportation Coordination Office (CTCO) efforts to evaluate trends in terminal performance. Railinc also participated in the analysis and delivery of Clear Path historical train movement data to support the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency (CREATE) Program.
2022’s work will build on Railinc’s vision to explore new use cases for data analysis. Among the forward-thinking initiatives pursued this year, Railinc will focus on working toward the development of a fully connected Rail Industry GIS (RIGIS) network. An advanced network routing methodology that supports rail traffic analysis and allows for more precise mileage calculations will also be a key priority in 2022. Finally, a Clear Path system upgrade, focusing on infrastructure improvement and application modernization to improve performance, is also on the docket.
These solutions are helping to make transportation infrastructure safer and are helping railroads and companies deliver resources and consumer products more efficiently and at a lower cost. Railinc is the largest single source of real-time accurate interline rail data for the North American railroad system.
215 Inspection Support: This portion of the project will support data, analysis and development of priorities that progress regulatory modernization and include the use of technology to aid carmen with completion of effective inspections to support future cost-savings.
Support for Electronic Air Slips (Brakes I, III): This portion of the project will provide data analysis and support for 24-hour, off-air, unlimited pick-ups/set-offs and brake slip mileage validation that supports regulatory efforts.
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Reliable expected time of arrival (ETA) details for rail shipments is a feature highly requested by industry stakeholders, as having insight into a shipment’s ETA can improve efficiency and overall performance within the supply chain network. Following a 2020 proof of concept regarding sequence modeling and advanced ETA, in 2021, Railinc was able to shift from using historical data to predict ETA to employing deep learning – an organizational first – and sequence modeling to make real-world, real-time ETA predictions. More than 1500 origin-destination pairs were modeled and deployed into production last year, delivering ETA information to customers that predicts arrival times within an hourly range, a marked improvement from the previous estimation unit of measurement: days. Looking ahead, Railinc will improve upon its process by utilizing transfer learning, capable of training highly accurate, lane-specific models more quickly at one-third of the current expense.
When customers have access to more intelligent tools to assess maintenance planning cycles, the potential for cost savings is significant. With the launch of Railinc’s new Wheelset Intelligence tool in 2021, car owners now have better visibility into when a railcar wheelset is approaching condemnable wheel impact load status and needs to be replaced. Using this tool, customers can view the probability of a specific wheelset becoming condemnable with more than 90 percent accuracy recall and use that knowledge, coupled with additional metadata, to make informed, data-driven decisions around how and when to perform repairs. Railinc looks forward to providing further value this year by increasing its investment into degradation estimation, specifically focusing on using deep neural networks to provide specific, foreseeable ranges of mileage or time until the wheel reaches condemnable status to customers.
The RailSight® Suite of Applications provides more than 9.8 million daily shipment and equipment management events that enable 3PLs (third-party logistics), equipment owners and other customers to easily plan operations and respond to issues.
Using AI and machine learning, RailSight Advanced ETA trains models per origin-destination pairs and delivers a more accurate ETA that accounts for complex operating practices.
Reports on key terminal performance indicators enabling greater control over equipment costs
Comprehensive tracking and tracing solution with the most accurate view of traffic on the North American rail network that helps eliminate blind spots
Monitoring of shipments and equipment allowing businesses to act on issues before they impact operations
On-demand equipment queries for more informed decisions and better planning
Near real-time exception reporting through email notifications, providing immediate visibility into key shipment scenarios
CarLogix optimizes railcar repair management by integrating asset health data, industry rule management and billing automation in a single system. Whether a customer repairs cars or manages maintenance for a fleet, CarLogix ensures accuracy and enhanced productivity at every step of the repair process.
A one-stop, one-step module to view equipment health and Umler® information for a list of cars
Automated web services that ensure car repair management systems remain compliant with all AAR rule changes
System-guided recording and automated submission to the data exchange ensure accuracy
A complete solution for back-office management with automated invoice auditing, exception management and ERP integration
Customizable reports and analytics allow informed asset and shop
Analytics & Insights products provide actionable business insights using asset, shipment, location and component data. By placing advanced business intelligence at a customer’s fingertips, Analytics & Insights products enable reduced service disruptions, improved safety, managed costs and streamlined daily operations.
Leveraging the best visibility into component life across the North American fleet and using AI and advanced data science, Wheelset Intelligence predicts the optimal time to replace a wheelset and reduce repair costs.
Visibility into performance, distribution and maintenance data designed to simplify component approval processes
Predictive equipment health reports help reduce safety incidents and service disruptions
Summarized fleet health reports enable teams to address issues at the optimal time and place
Timely scans of assets on customer property enables tactical equipment maintenance decisions
Decision support products delivering insight by integrating a variety of data sources, including car locations, and leveraging business intelligence, artificial intelligence and machine learning tools
The TransmetriQ Rail Management System (RMS) is a modular platform providing single-source, timely insights and tools that enable teams to manage and optimize rail operations. The TransmetriQ RMS eliminates the need for multiple systems to manage billing, tracing, asset health, and more. Custom dashboards provide exactly the data teams want, exactly how they want it. Users can increase productivity and unleash their supply chain with the new TransmetriQ RMS.
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Railinc treats its customers like partners and seeks to create and improve products based on feedback and guidance from the people who use those products every day. Railinc team members care about the success of our customers and see their success as our success. 2021 marked another year where customer satisfaction scores on our annual survey set a new record.
“You have a great team in the CSC department.”
“The Customer Success team is amazing to work with, regardless if the error is user error or system error or other, they are always professional and kind and eager to help.”
“Thank you for displaying a level of responsiveness that is largely absent from business these days.”
“A shout out to [the team] for handling [our] requests as [they] constantly deliver over and above for [our railroad].”
“Honestly, Railinc has always been very proactive in seeking out opportunities of improvement internally and with the carriers throughout the years. I’ve always been impressed with the focus on quality and helpfulness provided.”
“I have never had a bad experience when dealing with Railinc. I appreciate all the help they have given me over the years.”
“[The team] at Railinc do a great job supporting us. They are true professionals and never miss a beat on working through a situation. Always attentive and responsive with a positive attitude. They are the reason we have such a great experience with Railinc.”
“In all of the years that I have used Railinc I have received nothing but great service and responses.”
RailIinc is a wholly-owned subsidiary
