About Consist

Consist is a rail fleet and procurement intelligence service for the companies that build, maintain and supply rail fleets in the United States, Canada and Mexico: transit, passenger rail and freight.

Rail work is won years before the RFP. A commuter railroad's coaches come due for a midlife overhaul; its locomotives approach an engine rebuild; an agency's HVAC failures climb. General bid services see the RFP when it lands. We start from the fleet.

What we track

• Every rail fleet in the US, Canada and Mexico: commuter and intercity rail, metro, light rail, streetcar, people movers, airport APMs and freight locomotives from Class I to short line. Builder, model, build and rebuild years, active units, subsystem suppliers, power supply.
• How hard each fleet works and what it costs to keep running: estimated miles per car, maintenance cost per car-mile against peers, and when midlife and engine overhauls come due.
• Every relevant bid from 128 rail agencies and their procurement platforms across vehicles, signals, track, power, stations and operations, scored for relevance, plus contract awards with winners and prices.

Where the data comes from

Fleet and cost data start from the FTA National Transit Database (public domain), refreshed monthly, and STB Form R-1 reports for freight railroads, and are extended with researched records from agency documents, railroad filings and trade press, each graded for confidence. Bids come from agency portals, procurement platforms and Canadian open data (CanadaBuys, Quebec SEAO). See Data and methodology.