Railinc Corporation
Encyclopedia
Railinc Corporation provides rail data, IT and information technology
services to the North American freight railway industry. Railinc is a for-profit subsidiary of the Association of American Railroads
.
Railinc headquarters is located in Cary, North Carolina
.
Railinc employs a wide range of business and IT professionals from product managers and business analysts to software engineers and system administrators. Approximately ten percent of Railinc employees are certified project managers.
(SaaS) to the freight rail industry. Because many of the company's IT systems are required by formal railroad operating rules, the company’s applications and services can be found embedded in critical operations and financial systems throughout the industry. One such system is the Umler system. The Railinc Umler system is the rail industry's official, mission-critical source for rail equipment information, including freight cars of all varieties, locomotives and end of train devices. A 2009 redesign of this system replaced the 40-year-old legacy U.M.L.E.R. database. The name was an acronym for Universal Machine Language Equipment Register, but the acronym was dropped in 2009 with the launch of the new Umler system in favor of the lower case spelling and trademarked name.
Railinc also provides tracking and tracing data, known as car location messages (CLMs). The RailSight engine delivers car location messages to rail equipment owners, shippers, and third-party logistics providers. The data is used for fleet management and to track and trace the movement of freight and freight cars throughout North America to ensure goods are delivered on-time or to track the progress of their movement. The RailSight engine delivers more than 7.5 million rail events each day from more than 550 Class I
, Class II
and Class III
railroads and shops across the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Other Railinc systems include the Damaged and Defective Car Tracking (DDCT) System that is used for identifying and tracking damaged and defective rail cars to ensure their proper handling on the railways. This system, launched in 2011, made the 125-year-old paper defect card obsolete. The primary purpose of the defect card was to aid in maintaining a record of identified defects on each car; of where the defects originated; and to determine the responsibility for such defects.
Railinc also provides the Equipment Health Management System (EHMS) that monitors equipment to identify possible mechanical problems; Interline Settlement System that settles funds monthly between railroads; Forward & Store is a secure system for exchanging interline waybill information; Railinc Message Switch delivers more than nine million messages each day over its electronic data interchange
(EDI) network, including transportation waybills, advance train consists, blocking requests and responses and trip plans; Railinc tracking and tracing services help customers identify cars and their shipments in the rail network. Railinc also maintains the only industry-accepted version of the North American railroad industry's official code tables, also known as industry reference files (IRFs), which includes the active reporting marks for the North American rail industry. Industry Reference Files (IRFs) are the spell checkers, data dictionaries and thesaurus for all intra and inter-industry communication and are used to assure consistency in data interpretation. Railinc offers a free online look-up of reporting marks and other industry reference files through the Railinc IRFi website. FindUs.Rail is a comprehensive source for individual contact information for specific rail reporting marks. The company also operates Steelroads, which allows shippers to trace the movement of their rail freight shipments.
The company is part of the surface transportation information sharing and analysis center (ST-ISAC).
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
services to the North American freight railway industry. Railinc is a for-profit subsidiary of the Association of American Railroads
Association of American Railroads
The Association of American Railroads is an industry trade group representing primarily the major freight railroads of North America . Amtrak and some regional commuter railroads are also members...
.
Corporate structure
Railinc was established as an information technology department within the Association of American Railroads AAR, and later spun off as a wholly owned, for-profit subsidiary of the AAR in 1998.Railinc headquarters is located in Cary, North Carolina
Cary, North Carolina
Cary is a large town and suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina in Wake and Chatham counties in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located almost entirely in Wake County, it is the second largest municipality in that county and the third largest municipality in The Triangle after Raleigh and Durham...
.
Railinc employs a wide range of business and IT professionals from product managers and business analysts to software engineers and system administrators. Approximately ten percent of Railinc employees are certified project managers.
Products and services
Railinc processes and delivers vital rail data and provides software as a serviceSoftware as a Service
Software as a service , sometimes referred to as "on-demand software," is a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hosted centrally and are typically accessed by users using a thin client, normally using a web browser over the Internet.SaaS has become a common...
(SaaS) to the freight rail industry. Because many of the company's IT systems are required by formal railroad operating rules, the company’s applications and services can be found embedded in critical operations and financial systems throughout the industry. One such system is the Umler system. The Railinc Umler system is the rail industry's official, mission-critical source for rail equipment information, including freight cars of all varieties, locomotives and end of train devices. A 2009 redesign of this system replaced the 40-year-old legacy U.M.L.E.R. database. The name was an acronym for Universal Machine Language Equipment Register, but the acronym was dropped in 2009 with the launch of the new Umler system in favor of the lower case spelling and trademarked name.
Railinc also provides tracking and tracing data, known as car location messages (CLMs). The RailSight engine delivers car location messages to rail equipment owners, shippers, and third-party logistics providers. The data is used for fleet management and to track and trace the movement of freight and freight cars throughout North America to ensure goods are delivered on-time or to track the progress of their movement. The RailSight engine delivers more than 7.5 million rail events each day from more than 550 Class I
Class I railroad
A Class I railroad in the United States and Mexico, or a Class I rail carrier in Canada, is a large freight railroad company, as classified based on operating revenue.Smaller railroads are classified as Class II and Class III...
, Class II
Class II railroad
A Class II railroad in the United States is a mid-sized freight-hauling railroad, in terms of its operating revenue. , a railroad with revenues greater than $20.5 million but less than $277.7 million for at least three consecutive years is considered a Class II railroad...
and Class III
Class III railroad
A Class III railroad, as defined by the Surface Transportation Board, is a railroad with an annual operating revenue of less than $20 million . The term only applies to United States railroads, but is sometimes applied to other countries...
railroads and shops across the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Other Railinc systems include the Damaged and Defective Car Tracking (DDCT) System that is used for identifying and tracking damaged and defective rail cars to ensure their proper handling on the railways. This system, launched in 2011, made the 125-year-old paper defect card obsolete. The primary purpose of the defect card was to aid in maintaining a record of identified defects on each car; of where the defects originated; and to determine the responsibility for such defects.
Railinc also provides the Equipment Health Management System (EHMS) that monitors equipment to identify possible mechanical problems; Interline Settlement System that settles funds monthly between railroads; Forward & Store is a secure system for exchanging interline waybill information; Railinc Message Switch delivers more than nine million messages each day over its electronic data interchange
Electronic Data Interchange
Electronic data interchange is the structured transmission of data between organizations by electronic means. It is used to transfer electronic documents or business data from one computer system to another computer system, i.e...
(EDI) network, including transportation waybills, advance train consists, blocking requests and responses and trip plans; Railinc tracking and tracing services help customers identify cars and their shipments in the rail network. Railinc also maintains the only industry-accepted version of the North American railroad industry's official code tables, also known as industry reference files (IRFs), which includes the active reporting marks for the North American rail industry. Industry Reference Files (IRFs) are the spell checkers, data dictionaries and thesaurus for all intra and inter-industry communication and are used to assure consistency in data interpretation. Railinc offers a free online look-up of reporting marks and other industry reference files through the Railinc IRFi website. FindUs.Rail is a comprehensive source for individual contact information for specific rail reporting marks. The company also operates Steelroads, which allows shippers to trace the movement of their rail freight shipments.
The company is part of the surface transportation information sharing and analysis center (ST-ISAC).
Awards
Railinc has been recognized locally and by industry trade groups for excellence including the following awards:- 2011 - Best Places to Work in the Triangle
- 2011 - Inbound Logistics Top 100 Logistics IT Companies
- 2011 - "40 Under 40" Executive Leadership Award
- 2010 - 2011 Top Software Developers (Triangle Business Journal Book of Lists)
- 2010 - CFO of the Year, Medium Size Business
- 2009 - NCTA 21 Award for Industry-Driven Technology Company by the North Carolina Technology Association