NAICS 33651Industry · 5-digitinternational market

Railroad rolling stock manufacturing

This industry comprises establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing and rebuilding locomotives and railroad cars, of any type or gauge, including frames and parts. The manufacture of rapid transit cars and special-purpose self-propelled railroad equipment, such as rail layers, ballast distributors, rail-tamping equipment and other railway track maintenance equipment is included in this industry. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 31
Under 10 employeesA: 32%
Establishments · USA: 211
Employment · USA: 24,409
Payroll · USA: $2.1B

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–4723%

5–9310%

10–1913%

20–491135%

50–99413%

100–19913%

200–49926%

500+26%

Of 31 Canadian establishments with employees, 32% have fewer than ten — an industry where large establishments carry real weight.

Where they areA

Quebec1445%

Ontario1239%

British Columbia413%

Manitoba13%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Manufacturing, US · opened 2020

86.2%

1 year

70.8%

3 years

58.4%

5 years

45.3%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 336, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

international competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 336 Transportation equipment manufacturing

A tiered supply chain in which price is dictated downward. The reachable ends are specialty vehicles, trailers, truck bodies and aftermarket.

Who sets the price: A few OEMs, through tiered supply contracts.
The software it runs on: Automotive and aerospace quality systems, supplier portals, product lifecycle management.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 3365 Railroad rolling stock manufacturing covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 3365

Freight Railcar PlantStructure decides

binding constraint: growth quality

Thirty-one Canadian establishments, of which a handful are the whole industry — passenger rolling stock built under public transit contracts in Quebec and Ontario, and freight cars built in Hamilton. The passenger side is a procurement contest among global groups and is not an entry proposition at any ordinary scale. The freight side looks more approachable: a railcar is welded steel on bought trucks and couplers, and a lessor or railroad orders hundreds at a time. The cut is what those orders look like over a cycle. Greenbrier, one of the two large North American builders, called fiscal 2025 a record — $3,240.2M of revenue, 22,000 units delivered, an 18.7% aggregate gross margin — yet took orders for only 13,200 units, ended the year with a backlog of 16,600 units worth $2.2B, guided fiscal 2026 down to 17,500–20,500 deliveries and $2.7–3.2B of revenue, and announced two further plant closures in the fourth quarter [A]. That is a record year in which the order book ran at 60% of output. Demand is replacement of a long-lived fleet, released in lumps by a small number of lessors and Class I railroads when freight volumes and interest rates allow, and the incumbents respond by flexing plants in Mexico and owning lease fleets (Greenbrier's is 17,000 cars at 98% utilisation [A]) that carry them through the trough. An entrant has the plant but not the lease book, and meets its first downturn with one product and no annuity. The reachable work around this industry — car repair, wheel and component reconditioning, track-maintenance equipment — is mentioned in the definition and was not examined.

NAICS 33655 vendors named14 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Automotive and aerospace quality systems, supplier portals, product lifecycle management.

Catalogued categories — named, not analysed

Discrete manufacturing ERP SaaS 31-33

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Manufacturing, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Aircraft assemblers and aircraft assembly inspectors One industry 91.3%

Supervisors, assembly and fabrication One industry 88.3%

Machine operators and related workers in pulp and paper production and wood processing and manufacturing One industry 86.1%

Managers in manufacturing and utilities One industry 84.4%

Machine operators and related workers in chemical, plastic and rubber processing One industry 82.7%

Mechanical, electrical and electronics assemblers and inspectors One industry 82.3%

Machine operators and related workers in food, beverage and associated products processing One industry 79.1%

Machine operators and related workers in mineral and metal products processing and manufacturing One industry 77.7%

Furniture, wood, plastic and other products assemblers, finishers and inspectors One industry 73.9%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 70.8%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Other technical trades Across the economy 20%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 16.3%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 15.2%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 11.6%

Technical inspectors and regulatory officers Across the economy 10.7%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 9.6%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 9.2%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 8.3%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 7.7%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 4.8%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 33651. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
336510	Railroad rolling stock manufacturing	31	screened at 3365