Railinc, a provider of information management systems for the railroad industry, has installed a new, Web-based system. Known as the Umler system, it replaces a 40-year-old legacy application. The technology provides critical information about rail equipment used when carriers are servicing freight customers, making trip plans, testing air brakes or making repairs. The Umler system gives carriers, equipment owners and shippers real-time access to detailed equipment data via a Web application. The result, according to Railinc, is improved communication and collaboration among rail partners for asset management and rail safety. Implementation of the new system caps seven years of industry-wide development, involving representatives of every Class 1 railroad and many of the largest rail-equipment owners. More than 800,000 lines of code were written, containing more than 20,000 business rules. In all, more than two million equipment records were transformed, Railinc said. The Umler system tracks data on two million pieces of rail equipment, including 1.4 million railcars and 25,000 locomotives.

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