{"id":1523,"date":"2016-06-29T14:58:39","date_gmt":"2016-06-29T21:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rail4.custom-site-design.com\/?p=1523"},"modified":"2023-03-03T17:35:40","modified_gmt":"2023-03-04T01:35:40","slug":"track-and-trace-railcars-cn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.railcartracking.com\/track-and-trace-railcars-cn\/","title":{"rendered":"Track & Trace Your Rail Shipments For Free With Canadian National Tools"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article has been updated on 1\/27\/2017 to reflect the latest updates to Tools.<\/em><\/p>\n

Canadian National is another Class I railroad that provides web-based tools for rail shippers and receivers to track their shipments. They package their railcar tracking tools into what is called Tools. You can plan a shipment, get pricing, bill a shipment and pay for a shipment here, but this article focuses on the Monitor Shipments section. If you have been thinking about using CN’s rail shipment tracing tools or you have been using just a small part of it and would like to learn more about what it can do, please read on.<\/p>\n

To sign up for CN Tools, take a look at this article<\/a>, which explains how to sign up for most of the Class I railroad track & trace tools.<\/p>\n

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Copy and paste a list of railcars to track and trace<\/h3>\n

The Quick Trace feature will accept up to 300 railcar IDs. After pasting or entering the IDs, you may save the list with a name of your choice. The output format can be set to several different layouts including two standardized formats that can be used to feed other business systems when the Response Type is set to Spreadsheet. Although the Spreadsheet radio button has a Microsoft Excel icon next to it, it is actually a comma separated values (CSV) formatted file. This is a good thing, since CSV files easily import into business systems and they open and display perfectly in Microsoft Excel. Other Response Types include Browser and PDF. The response will be the last reported location of each railcar in the list. As long as CN is in the route of the current shipment, you will have visibility of the railcar on any railroad. However, if CN is not involved in the current shipment, no data will be returned.<\/p>\n

How to get there: When you first login to the CN website, it will take you to the Tools Home page. Under the header “Monitor Shipments”, there is a link named “Quick Trace”; click on that link and paste a list of railcars onto the page.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Maximum history<\/h3>\n

There is no feature that enables you to see back farther than the beginning of a current trip, which can be done with the Trip Plans feature (see below). This is a significant exclusion in my opinion. At least 1 month or more of history is needed to dispute demurrage charges, investigate delays, and review service performance. If you agree, you may want to consider a 3rd party system<\/a> that will store at least 1 year of history of movement data.<\/p>\n

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ETAs<\/h3>\n

As with all Class I track & trace systems, ETAs to the final destination are limited. Here is a summary of the ETAs I was able to see, or not see, in the CN system:<\/p>\n