NAICS 4821Industry group · 4-digitnational market1 market record

Rail transportation

SoftwareRail Operations & Yard Management Software 482

This industry group comprises establishments primarily engaged in operating railways. Establishments primarily engaged in the operation of long-haul or mainline railways, short-haul railways and passenger railways are included. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 277
Under 10 employeesA: 39%

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

1–47828%

5–93111%

10–19269%

20–496825%

50–994014%

100–199145%

200–49952%

500+155%

Of 277 Canadian establishments with employees, 39% have fewer than ten — an industry where large establishments carry real weight.

Where they areA

Ontario8631%

Quebec5419%

Alberta3814%

Saskatchewan3713%

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

Transportation and Warehousing, US · opened 2020

84.1%

1 year

67.4%

3 years

52.7%

5 years

36.1%

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.

No US figure is shown. County Business Patterns is coded to the 2017 US edition of NAICS; this code either does not exist there, names a different industry, or is outside the programme's coverage (most of agriculture, rail, postal and public administration are). A figure is attached only where both the code and the title agree.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 482, 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.

national competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 482 Rail transportation

Class I rail is closed. Short lines exist on branch lines the majors shed, and they depend on a few shippers.

Who sets the price: A regulated duopoly in Canada.
The software it runs on: Rail operations, yard and car 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.

Operating businessScreened

Short-Line RailwayStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

Mainline freight in Canada is two companies and is not a market to enter; passenger rail is a Crown corporation and commuter agencies. The only enterable thing in this code is a short line — a branch the Class I no longer wanted, bought or leased with its handful of shippers. The 277 establishments show the shape: 15 with 500 or more employees, and 78 with one to four [A], with Saskatchewan's 37 largely the farmer-owned grain branches. The attraction is real: a captive traffic base and an infrastructure asset that nobody will build a second time. The cut is what the asset demands. Track, bridges and locomotives must be maintained whether or not the cars come, and a branch was shed precisely because its traffic density did not cover that. CN spends on the order of C$3 billion a year on its capital program against C$17.3B of revenue to hold a 61.9% operating ratio [A]; a short line carries the same physics at a fraction of the density, with its revenue set as a division of a through rate the connecting Class I controls. Where short lines work as an investment, they work as a portfolio: Genesee & Wyoming's 120 railroads went to Brookfield and GIC for about $8.4B including debt [A] — infrastructure-fund capital, spreading single-shipper risk across a continent. One line, one owner, three shippers is the same capital without the diversification. The rail operations software sold here is screened separately.

NAICS 48216 vendors named11 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.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 482 Rail transportation

Rail Operations & Yard Management SoftwareOne thing must be true

binding constraint: market size

Incumbent Wabtec (NYSE: WAB, formerly GE Transportation digital)

There are seven Class I railroads in North America and each builds or buys once a decade, which makes the reachable buyer list countable on two hands. Short lines and industrial rail are more numerous and far smaller. Wabtec sells the operations software attached to the locomotive electronics it already supplies. Sourced update: Wabtec's digital segment grew 74.4% to $1.030B in 2025 — and almost all of it was acquired. The incumbent's strategy in this market is to buy the entrant, which is a real exit path and a poor competitive position.

NAICS 4822 vendors named2 sourced figuresOpen →

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.

Companies in this industry · 7

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

Company	Filed under	Revenue	Rank
Canadian National RailwayPrivate	Rail transportation4821	$17.3B	1/7
Arctic Gateway GroupPrivate	Rail transportation4821	—	2/7
CPKCPrivate	Rail transportation4821	—	3/7
Farmer- and municipally-owned grain short linesPrivate	Rail transportation4821	—	4/7
Genesee & WyomingPrivate	Rail transportation4821	—	5/7
OmniTRAXPrivate	Rail transportation4821	—	6/7
WatcoPrivate	Rail transportation4821	—	7/7

Who works here

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

Tagged to this industry

Water and rail transport operators and labourers and related occupations Train crew operating occupations

Concentrated in this sectorA

Mail and message distribution occupations One industry 90.8%

Train crew operating occupations One industry 90.7%

Transportation officers and controllers One industry 75.7%

Transport truck and transit drivers Mostly one sector 65.4%

Managers in transportation and postal and courier services Mostly one sector 63.9%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 57.7%

Contractors and supervisors, technical maintenance trades and heavy equipment and transport operators Mostly one sector 22.6%

Water and rail transport operators and labourers and related occupations Mostly one sector 11.4%

Automotive service technicians Mostly one sector 9.1%

Crane operators and water well drillers Mostly one sector 6.6%

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

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 13.9%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 5.8%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 5.1%

Survey, statistical and data entry occupations Across the economy 5%

Technical inspectors and regulatory officers Across the economy 3.9%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 3.7%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 3.3%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 3.1%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 2.7%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 2.7%

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 4821, and 4 in all once every level is counted. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
48211	Rail transportation	277	screened at 4821