CSX Modernizes Mission-Critical Railroad Operations with MongoDB

As one of the largest railroad transportation companies in the United States, CSX operates nearly 2,000 trains 24/7 over 21,000 miles of track, connecting communities and driving commerce across the country. The company is committed to becoming America’s best-run railroad, and adopting cutting-edge technology is one of the ways CSX is working to make that happen. In 2023, CSX embarked on a digital transformation journey, partnering with Microsoft Azure to modernize its technical infrastructure and to improve its digital transportation solutions.

The Railroad Transportation Operations Portal (RTOP) is at the heart of CSX’s operations. This mission-critical platform provides near real-time visibility into train operations for 600 field management personnel and over 450 leaders at CSX. As part of its modernization strategy, CSX chose to migrate RTOP from its on-premises MongoDB Enterprise Advanced to MongoDB Atlas on Azure. The company wanted to take advantage of MongoDB Atlas’s managed features to reduce operational overhead while tapping into the service’s near real-time streaming capabilities.

“We’ve utilized MongoDB on premises since 2019, and it quickly became one of our preferred data store solutions because of its high availability,” said Duane Lupinski, Systems Architect at CSX. “This is why we’ve chosen to mature and grow our footprint on MongoDB by migrating to MongoDB Atlas.”

CSX’s RTOP provides critical monitoring and alerts for CSX’s entire network of train operations. When conducting the migration, CSX needed to maintain RTOP’s 24/7 availability with minimal disruption to its users. The company worked closely with MongoDB Professional Services, using their expertise to develop and implement a carefully orchestrated migration strategy.

After just over two months of careful planning and preparation, CSX worked alongside MongoDB Professional Services to complete the migration to MongoDB Atlas in a matter of hours. The company accomplished this by using Cluster-to-Cluster Sync, which facilitated continuous data synchronization between the source and target databases during the migration.

RTOP on MongoDB Atlas serves as a centralized operations monitoring system, processing continuous streams of data from trains across CSX’s network. The platform analyzes this data in near real time to detect potential issues, such as train delays or staffing shortages, and generates immediate alerts for relevant personnel. Through a map-based interface, RTOP facilitates the monitoring of train operations at both the network level and the local level. Field managers and leadership can track train movements, review operational metrics, and respond to alerts as needed.

With the scaling capabilities of MongoDB Atlas, RTOP can dynamically adjust to changing workloads and performance demands. The solution’s architecture takes full advantage of the managed services, removing the operational overhead of database management while maintaining high availability and performance for CSX’s railroad operations.

Duane Lupinski, Systems Architect, CSX

By drawing on the expertise of MongoDB’s Professional Services team and migrating RTOP to MongoDB Atlas, CSX completed a major step in its modernization journey. The platform is not only more scalable and easier to maintain, but it also provides the near real-time visibility that the company’s operations depend on. Field managers and leaders now benefit from improved system reliability and performance, which facilitates faster response times to operational challenges.

Looking ahead, CSX plans to adopt additional MongoDB products and capabilities—including MongoDB Atlas Search and MongoDB Time Series Collections—to enhance operational efficiency and unlock new data insights. The successful migration of RTOP has established a proven blueprint for modernizing other mission-critical applications within CSX’s infrastructure.

As the company continues its digital transformation, MongoDB will remain a cornerstone of its technology stack. “We want to take advantage of the benefits of MongoDB Atlas as much as we can moving forward,” said Lupinski.

Duane Lupinski, Systems Architect, CSX