Signing up and your first login

Create your account, confirm your email, start your railroad's workspace, add a payment method, and set up the first records.

Creating your railroad's account

Open the RailCompliant sign-up page and click Create an account.

Create your account form asking for the railroad or organization name, FRA reporting mark, your name, email, a password, and your month and year of birth

The form asks for:

Railroad / organization name — how your railroad is named throughout the app.
FRA reporting mark — optional, but worth filling in; it appears on printed reports.
Your full name and Email.
Password — at least 10 characters — and a confirmation.
Month and year of birth. Starting a railroad needs someone 18 or older. If you are 13 to 17, the form offers a free crew account instead and keeps nothing you entered; an adult at your railroad can start the railroad and add you to it. The birth date isn't kept, only the fact that you said you were 18 or older, and when.

Click Create account & start trial. The page then says Check your email to continue: RailCompliant has emailed you a link, valid for 48 hours. Nothing else is set up until you open it.

The page says the same thing whatever address you enter, so the form can't be used to find out who has an account. If your address already has a RailCompliant login, the email says so instead and links to sign in and use Start a railroad; nothing about your account changes.

Confirming your email and starting the railroad

Open the link in the email. It confirms your address, signs you in, and opens Start a railroad with the railroad name and FRA reporting mark you entered already filled in. They are kept for as long as the link is valid; after that, sign in and fill them in again.

Start a railroad, with the railroad name and FRA reporting mark filled in from the sign-up form

Check them and click Start the railroad. (Starting a railroad from a free crew account that hasn't said it is 18 or older first asks the same month-and-year question, once.) That creates your railroad as its own workspace and makes you its owner: its first administrator, with authority to certify inspections, and the one person who manages the subscription. See Billing for how ownership works and how to hand it to someone else later.

If the email never arrives, check your spam folder. You can also sign in with the email and password you chose; until the address is confirmed, a banner across the top of every page offers Resend link.

Signing up a group, say at a museum or club meeting on one wifi network? Each person should use their own phone or browser. RailCompliant limits how many accounts one browser can create in a day, to stop automated sign-ups, and allows a group on one network much more than a single browser.

Adding a payment method

Straight after Start the railroad you are taken to a secure checkout page to enter a card. The trial is 14 days, and a card is required to start it, but nothing is charged until the trial ends. Card details go to the payment processor and never to RailCompliant.

When checkout goes through, RailCompliant emails you a confirmation that your payment method was accepted, with the date your trial ends. Until checkout is complete, the only page the app will open is Billing, where you can start it again.

If sign-up ever shows "Sign-ups are temporarily unavailable", the payment side of the service is being set up or repaired and nothing was created. The RailCompliant team is alerted automatically; try again a little later or write to help@foxxcyber.com.

Signing in

Sign in with your email and password at the sign-in page. If you have forgotten your password, click Reset it and enter your address; RailCompliant sends a single-use link that expires after an hour. For security the page gives the same response whether or not the address is registered, so check your inbox rather than the screen for confirmation. Several failed attempts in a row pause sign-in for that email address from that connection for a few minutes.

To change a password you already know, use the password page on your account rather than the reset flow. Changing it signs you out everywhere else — any other browser or device still signed in to your account has to sign in again.

A sign-in lasts up to 30 days, and ends sooner if the account goes unused for 14 days, so a shared shop computer does not stay signed in indefinitely.

If an administrator gave you an account from the crew roster, RailCompliant emailed you a single-use link for your first sign-in. It is valid for 48 hours and lets you choose your own password; nobody else ever sees it. If it has expired, use Reset it on the sign-in page.

What to set up first

Work in this order — each step makes the next one useful.

Add your locomotives. Almost everything else in the app hangs off a locomotive record: inspections, work orders, fuel, the annual report. When you add an engine that has been in service for years, fill in the compliance baseline fields so the interval clocks start from real history rather than from zero. See Locomotives.
Add your crew roster. Inspections record who performed the work and who certified it, and both come from the roster. Set each person's labor terms — volunteer, paid, or contractor, and an hourly rate — while you are there, because every hours form reads them. See Crew and qualifications.
Decide who gets an account, who can sign, and who approves purchases. Being on the roster and having a login are separate things, and certify and purchase-approval authority are separate again. See Users and access.
Check what general members can do. Out of the box they do the railroad's day-to-day work while the roster, imports, exports, form templates and money reports stay with administrators. Adjust it on Settings.
Set up your stores. Coal, oil, diesel, and water fills on runs are drawn from a store, which carries the unit and the price. See Consumable stores.
Start filing inspections. Once the fleet and roster exist, the Compliance Due page has something to compute against. See Recording inspections & tests.

If you are bringing records over from spreadsheets, the import tool can load locomotives and rolling stock in bulk.

Not setting up a railroad? Crew members and railfans can make a free crew account instead, and start a railroad from it later.

How railroads and people relate

Everyone at your railroad works inside your railroad's own workspace. Records, photos, parts, people, and the audit history all belong to that workspace, and no other railroad using RailCompliant can reach them.

One person can hold a login at more than one railroad. That is deliberate — contract boiler inspectors, welders, itinerant machinists, and compliance consultants routinely work across several operations, and each railroad grants that person access on its own terms, including their role and whether they may certify. A person's role at one railroad has no effect on their role at another.

If your login belongs to more than one railroad, your current railroad's name at the top of the sidebar opens a menu of Your railroads, each with your role there. Pick one to switch; everything you see from then on belongs to that railroad until you switch again.