RailSignal — Rail Carrier Intelligence

The Data

Three federal datasets. One carrier score.

The Surface Transportation Board publishes Class I commodity flows at the 7-digit STCC level. The Federal Railroad Administration publishes every rail accident and incident. PHMSA publishes every hazmat release in transportation. No federal system joins commodity exposure to safety frequency to release severity at the carrier level. RailSignal does the assembly.

The result: a single carrier-level safety score for every Class I railroad — combining what each carrier hauls, how often it has accidents per ton, and how severe its hazmat releases are when they happen.

STB Freight Commodity Statistics

Surface Transportation Board Quarterly Commodity Statistics, filed by Class I railroads on the public QCS form. Commodity flows at the 7-digit STCC level — tonnage, carloads, and gross freight revenue by commodity. 2,706 records across all six Class I carriers. Q4 2025 vintage. Reporting mark as the carrier-level key.

Federal

FRA Form 6180.54 — Accidents

Federal Railroad Administration rail equipment accident and incident records, reported by all railroads via the FRA Office of Safety Analysis. Accident type, location, casualties, and hazmat-car involvement. 15,680 records covering 2020–2026. Reporting railroad code, class, and short-line designation per record.

Federal

PHMSA Form 5800.1 — Hazmat

Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration hazmat transportation incident reports. Commodity released, quantity released, and casualties per incident. Rail-mode incidents filtered to Class I carriers — 1,652 records covering 2020–2025. Carrier-matched to STB and FRA reporting marks.

Federal

Intelligence Signals

What the joined federal record reveals.

Hazmat Release Severity

Few incidents, catastrophic volume

PHMSA release data exposes a profile no accident count reveals. One Class I carrier averages ~29,800 units released per hazmat incident — roughly 16x the next-highest carrier (~1,900) — rare events, but disproportionately severe when they occur. RailSignal weights release severity at parity with accident frequency in the Hazmat Risk component.

PHMSA Form 5800.1 · 2020–2025

Accident Frequency

Accidents normalized by tonnage hauled

Raw accident counts favor small carriers. RailSignal normalizes FRA accidents against STB commodity tonnage to produce accidents per million tons hauled. The Class I industry benchmark is 0.1786 accidents per million annual tons, annualized over the trailing 3-year window (recalibrated 2026-07-08) — carriers above it run more accidents per unit of freight moved than the industry norm.

FRA Form 6180.54 · STB QCS · 2020–2026

Hazmat Accident Share

How often accidents involve hazmat

RailSignal compares each carrier's hazmat-involved accident share to a frozen calibration benchmark of 21.5% (2020–2026 basis). Carriers materially above that benchmark carry a structurally different liability profile — their accidents are more likely to trigger evacuation, environmental remediation, and catastrophic-loss claims. RailSignal surfaces the share explicitly.

FRA Form 6180.54 · Hazmat Flag · 2020–2026

Casualty Severity

Outcomes per accident, not just frequency

Two carriers with identical accident rates can have very different casualty outcomes. RailSignal measures fatalities and injuries per accident against the industry benchmark of 0.114. A carrier with few accidents but high casualties-per-accident is a distinct risk from a high-frequency, low-severity operator.

FRA Form 6180.54 · Casualty Records · 2020–2026

Commodity Exposure

What each carrier actually hauls

Coal is 24.6% of Class I tonnage, chemicals 13.6%, farm products 10.6%. A carrier's commodity mix determines its structural hazmat exposure and its sensitivity to sector demand shifts. RailSignal maps each carrier's chemical and petroleum tonnage as the denominator for hazmat-incident rates.

STB Freight Commodity Statistics · Q4 2025

Absolute Benchmarking

Scored against the industry, not the peer set

RailSignal anchors every component to a fixed industry benchmark rather than ranking carriers against each other. A score below the midpoint means objectively worse than the Class I norm — a property that survives even when the scored population is small, and that lets new carriers be added without re-scoring the field.

AuditPoint Methodology · Class I Benchmark

The Short-Line Gap

Where federal transparency ends

Six Class I carriers move roughly 95% of U.S. rail tonnage and file public commodity data. The 600-plus short-line railroads — critical first-mile and last-mile infrastructure — file no public commodity breakdown. RailSignal documents this disclosure gap as a structural information asymmetry for short-line acquirers.

STB QCS · Class I Coverage · 2025

Three-Source Convergence

When independent datasets agree

The strongest signals appear when STB commodity data, FRA accident records, and PHMSA release data all point the same direction on a single carrier. Convergence across three independently maintained federal systems is the kind of finding that survives scrutiny — federal source to federal source to federal source.

STB · FRA · PHMSA · Joined

Annualization Disclosure

Known limitations, stated plainly

The current scoring annualizes quarterly STB commodity data as a tonnage proxy. This is disclosed per output and flagged for refinement against full-year STB totals before any carrier figure is used in a transaction. RailSignal states its data-vintage assumptions rather than burying them.

STB QCS · Q4 2025 × 4 proxy

Coming Soon

The Short-Line Disclosure Gap.

Six Class I carriers move roughly 95% of U.S. rail tonnage and file public commodity data. The 600-plus short-line railroads — the first-mile and last-mile infrastructure that connects shippers to the national network — file no public commodity breakdown. For the PE firms and infrastructure lenders most active in short-line M&A, the data gap is largest exactly where the deals are.

Class I Coverage

~95% of tonnage

Six carriers file full STB commodity statistics at the 7-digit STCC level. RailSignal scores all six today against absolute federal safety benchmarks.

Short-Line Railroads

600+ carriers

No public commodity-specific filing. FRA accident and PHMSA hazmat data exist at the carrier level, but without commodity tonnage there is no public denominator to normalize against.

The Buyer Gap

Largest where deals are

Short-line acquisition is the most active rail M&A segment. RailSignal documents the disclosure gap and is scoping a safety-only short-line score from FRA and PHMSA carrier records.

The Score

One score. Three federal signals.

RailSignal produces a 100-point composite safety score for each Class I railroad. Three components: Safety (35%) — FRA accidents per million tons hauled; Hazmat Risk (40%) — FRA hazmat-accident share combined with PHMSA release severity; Operational (25%) — casualties per accident.

Every component is scored against a fixed absolute industry benchmark — not a relative ranking. A carrier scoring below the midpoint is objectively worse than the Class I industry norm, not merely worse than its peers.

Strong

Score 80–100. Accident frequency, hazmat profile, and casualty rate all better than the Class I industry benchmark across all three components.

Adequate

Score 65–79. Fundamentally sound safety profile with one component near or modestly above the industry benchmark. Standard monitoring.

Watch

Score 50–64. One or more components materially worse than the industry benchmark — elevated accident frequency, disproportionate hazmat severity, or high casualty rate.

Elevated

Score 0–49. Safety or hazmat metrics substantially worse than the Class I norm across multiple components. Immediate flag for infrastructure lenders and liability underwriters.

RailSignal Score and risk tiers are AuditPoint derived analytical outputs — not official STB, FRA, or PHMSA designations. All inputs sourced from STB Freight Commodity Statistics, FRA Form 6180.54, and PHMSA Form 5800.1 federal datasets with vintage disclosed per output.

RailSignal Score Components

Safety

FRA accidents per million tons hauled, scored against the Class I industry benchmark of 0.1786 accidents per million annual tons per year (recalibrated 2026-07-08). Normalizes accident counts by STB commodity tonnage so large and small carriers are compared on the same per-freight basis.

35%

Hazmat Risk

Two equally weighted federal signals: FRA hazmat-involved accident share (industry benchmark 21.5%) and PHMSA release severity — quantity released per incident against the industry average of 1,851 units. Captures both how often and how severely hazmat is involved.

40%

Operational

Fatalities and injuries per accident, scored against the industry benchmark of 0.114 casualties per accident. Distinguishes high-frequency, low-severity carriers from those with fewer but more harmful accidents.

25%

Every component is scored against a fixed absolute industry benchmark — not a relative ranking against the peer set. Composite tiers: STRONG (80–100), ADEQUATE (65–79), WATCH (50–64), ELEVATED (0–49).

Who Uses It

Built for high-stakes rail decisions.

Insurance & Underwriting

Rail Liability Underwriters

Pricing rail liability and environmental coverage. A carrier's hazmat release severity and accident frequency — benchmarked against the Class I industry — surfaces catastrophic-loss exposure not visible in loss-run summaries alone.

Score a carrier's hazmat release severity vs. the industry benchmark

Identify disproportionate hazmat-accident share before binding coverage

Quantify casualty-per-accident outcomes across the Class I field

Credit & Lending

Rail Infrastructure Lenders

Underwriting rail infrastructure financings and asset-based facilities. A carrier's safety and hazmat profile is a material input where rolling stock, track, or terminal assets back the credit and a major incident could impair both operations and collateral.

Score a carrier's safety profile at origination against the industry norm

Flag carriers scoring WATCH or ELEVATED in the credit file

Track commodity-mix exposure to declining sectors like coal

Private Equity & M&A

Rail PE & Diligence Teams

Diligencing rail acquisition targets — including short-line buyers who need the Class I safety context their target connects into. The federal safety and hazmat record is a structural risk input no broker book provides.

Benchmark a target carrier's safety profile against the Class I field

Quantify hazmat severity exposure before signing an LOI

Map commodity concentration risk in a target's haul mix

RailSignal.

Three federal datasets. One carrier score.

What the joined federal record reveals.

The Short-Line Disclosure Gap.

One score. Three federal signals.

Built for high-stakes rail decisions.

What three federal datasets tell us.

Request RailSignal intelligence.