Rail Equipment Accident/Incident Source Data Reported to FRA

Railroad Equipment Accident/Incident Source Data (Form 54) contains raw data values for rail equipment accidents, collisions, derailments, fires, explosions, and other events reported by railroads to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). The dataset is provided by the Department of Transportation and replaced a legacy download system. It was last updated on 2026-03-26.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in rail equipment accidents based on reported event types like collisions and derailments
• Model risk factors for rail safety incidents based on reported damages exceeding annual thresholds
• Monitor compliance with FRA reporting requirements for railroads
• Build predictive models for rail infrastructure safety based on historical incident data

Strengths

• Data is sourced directly from mandatory railroad reports to the Federal Railroad Administration
• The dataset replaced a legacy system, indicating an effort to modernize data access
• Multiple file formats (JSON, XML, RDF, CSV) are available for download

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download

Provenance

Source

Department of Transportation

Collection Method

Reports submitted by railroads to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) on Form FRA 6180.54

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-26 12:44:49.800372; freshness should be verified