We make rail freight searchable.
RailScanner unifies route schedules, wagon tracking, operator coverage and corridor rate signals into a single fast search surface — built for shippers, intermodal operators and forwarders who got tired of emailing four national networks to price one corridor.
What RailScanner does
Four capabilities, one search bar. Every feature is built around the same primitive: show the user the next best move in under three seconds.
Route search
Search published rail services station to station from a single bar. We normalise station codes, operator line codes and service types, then sort by departure, transit time, interchange count or price. Bookmark a result and the URL is sharable.
OpenWagon & block tracking
Paste a wagon number, block reference or consignment note and we resolve the operator, current leg and event timeline — loading, departure, traction change, border crossing, interchange, deramp. No operator dropdown to guess from.
OpenOperator intelligence
A first-class registry of every operator we cover, with network reach, gauge, traction type, wagon fleet and intermodal capability. Useful for procurement teams comparing coverage before signing an annual contract.
OpenCorridor rates
Where operators expose rates, we surface them inline next to the matching service, split into linehaul, traction, terminal handling and last-mile. Where they do not, a transparent corridor benchmark keeps the cheapest option distinguishable at a glance.
OpenWhy we built RailScanner
Rail moves a large share of the world's land freight and is by a wide margin the lowest-carbon way to do it, yet it is the least legible mode in logistics. Ocean has carrier portals. Road has load boards. Rail has phone calls, spreadsheets and PDFs emailed between national networks.
The reason is structural. One movement is rarely one company: a corridor can cross four networks, break gauge twice, change traction three times and switch consignment-note regime halfway. There is no single booking reference that survives the journey, so nobody has been able to show a shipper one ranked list of options.
RailScanner is the search layer that should have existed all along. We sit on top of operator publications and terminal events, normalise the chaos — station codes, line codes, gauge, service types, interchange points — and give the user back what they actually came for: one ranked list of services, sorted by what matters to this consignment.
The bet is simple. If you remove the friction between "I have a corridor to price" and "I have a service to book", more freight moves by rail — and that is the rare case where the commercially better answer and the lower-carbon answer are the same answer.
How we deliver it
Speed is a feature. Every architectural choice is graded against a single benchmark: how quickly does the user see the next useful piece of information?
Edge-first delivery
Server-rendered pages with results streaming in as upstream sources resolve, so the page is interactive long before the slowest network responds.
Normalised data spine
Station codes, operator line codes, gauge and service type are the source of truth. Every upstream response is mapped onto that spine before it reaches the UI — no per-network surprises in the result list, and interchange points are explicit rather than implied.
Operator-neutral by design
We do not take referral fees or steer rankings. Cheapest is cheapest, fastest is fastest, and operators that do not publish rates still appear in the same list with a transparent corridor benchmark. Where we add a markup, it is our stated margin — not a hidden reorder of the results.
Where we are
RailScanner is early and we would rather say so than imply a finished product. The public shell, homepage and company pages are live; the route, operator and rate surfaces are next, followed by accounts and the shipper workspace.
The changelog is the complete release history — every entry is a real change, with nothing backfilled — and /status states which services are wired and which are not yet built.
Frequently asked questions
What is RailScanner?
RailScanner is a rail freight platform that unifies route schedules, wagon and block tracking, operator coverage and corridor rate signals into a single search-first interface for shippers, intermodal operators and forwarders buying rail capacity.
How many operators and countries do you cover?
Our coverage target is 150+ rail operators across 30+ countries and roughly 200k km of track, spanning standard, broad and metre gauge. The operator and station directories are being populated now — the /operators page always shows exactly what is live today rather than the target.
Why is rail harder to search than road or ocean?
Because a single rail movement is rarely one company. A Duisburg-to-Xi'an service can involve four national networks, two gauge breaks, several traction changes and a different consignment-note regime (CIM in Europe, SMGS onward). There is no equivalent of a single carrier booking number that survives the whole journey, which is exactly the normalisation problem we exist to solve.
Is the data live?
Not yet. RailScanner is early: the route, operator and rate surfaces are being built against a provider-agnostic adapter that currently runs on fixtures. When upstream feeds are connected, schedules and rates will refresh continuously and tracking will be on-demand against the operator system. The /status page states exactly what is wired at any moment.
Do I need an account to search routes?
No — route and station search will be available without an account. Booking requests, saved corridors, tracking history and team workspaces require a paid plan, starting at $1.99/month (Starter) and scaling to higher monthly limits.
How will you handle emissions figures?
Rail is structurally the low-carbon land mode, so the comparison matters. Estimates will use route distance and a per-traction-type gCO₂-per-tonne-kilometre factor following GLEC v3, shown next to the equivalent road figure for the same corridor. It is a planning estimate, not a regulatory-grade declaration — for compliance reporting always reference the certified consignment documentation.
Ready to price a corridor?
Search rail services across our operator network in one place. No account required to start.