Sources & methodology
Where the listings come from
RailcarWire credits every source and links every listing back to its original page. Thank you to these brokers, dealers and marketplaces for publishing their inventory openly.
| Source | Latest run | Listings | What we read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paquette Railway Solutions | OK | 80 | Broker inventory pages listed in PRS's public listings sitemap. Locomotive listings are skipped. |
| CRMS Live Railcar Inventory | OK | 21 | The public “available” and “railcars needed” tables. Needed rows feed our Wanted section. |
| Railbroker | OK | 8 | Product pages under /available-listings in Railbroker's public sitemap. $0.00 placeholder prices are ignored. |
| RailcarTrader (RailIron LLC) | OK | 16 | Public store pages, rendered in a headless browser because the store loads with JavaScript. $999,999 placeholder prices are ignored. |
| GovPlanet / IronPlanet | OK | 0 | The public Rail Equipment category page, filtered to freight cars and freight-car parts. Movers, MOW equipment and locomotives are excluded. |
| Railmover.com (Goff Media) | OK | 13 | Product pages in Railmover's public Rail Cars category. Car movers, locomotives, storage and cabooses are skipped. Prices come from the store's own product data; $0 means call for price. |
| RTEX Railcar Leasing & Sales | OK | 19 | Railcar product pages in RTEX's public product sitemap. Locomotives, switchers and generic inquiry pages are skipped. RTEX is quote-only, so no prices. |
| Owner-submitted listings | OK | 0 | Listings sent to us by owners, brokers and lessors through /submit/. Each one is reviewed before it appears. The submitter confirms they're authorized to list the cars. |
| Sterling Rail classifieds | Unavailable | 0 | Planned. Not collected yet: the site is HTTP-only and our current collector host can't reach it. |
| Rail Car Leasing & Logistics | Unavailable | 0 | Planned. Its inventory PDF is HTTP-only and unreachable from our current collector host. |
Latest collection: Oct 18, 2026 8:44 PM ET.
How we collect
- Our collector identifies itself honestly as
RailcarWireBot/0.1 (+https://railcarwire.com/bot), checks each site'srobots.txtbefore every fetch and waits at least 3 seconds between requests to the same site (longer if a site asks for it). - We read public pages only: no logins, paywalls or private APIs.
- We store a short excerpt (under 240 characters) and the link back, never full listing copy or images.
- Each listing gets a stable ID, so we can tell when it's new, when it changes and when it disappears. A source that fails to load never causes its listings to be marked as removed.
How we normalize
- Car type is inferred from the listing title and specs (e.g. “covered hopper”, “117J”, AAR codes). Anything we can't classify confidently is shown as “Other / Unspecified”.
- Sale / lease follows the listing's own wording. Price appears only when the source posts a real asking price, and placeholders such as $0.00 or $999,999 are ignored.
- Region comes from the location the listing states. Most brokers don't publish one, so many listings show “Unspecified”.
- Wanted listings come from public “cars needed” lists.
What we don't use
No proprietary car-registry or industry fleet databases, no scraped contact details, and no hobby or model listings. Everything on this site traces back to a public listing page you can open yourself.
Corrections and removal
Listing owners can ask us to correct, credit differently or remove their listings at any time: email railcarwire@mail.grokbot.com. We aim to respond within 2 business days.