Railinc Corporation (pronounced "rail-link") provides rail data and messaging services to the North American freight railway industry. Railinc is a for-profit subsidiary of the Association of American Railroads.

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. The nine-member corporate board of directors consists entirely of members of the railroad industry, including all of the Class I railroads in North America and the AAR. Railinc headquarters is located in Cary, North Carolina. Railinc's headquarters was relocated from joint operations in Chicago, Illinois and Washington, D.C., in 1999. Locations also considered were Denver, Colorado, Tampa, Florida, and Austin, Texas. Railinc employs nearly 300 full-time and contractor employees, approximately ten percent of whom are certified project managers.

Products and services

Railinc processes and delivers rail data as a service (DaaS) and provides software as a service (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. Key Railinc services include:

Corporate memberships

The company is part of the Surface Transportation Board information sharing and analysis center (ST-ISAC).