Systems and methods for managing railcar usage

A method of managing the transportation of crude oil by rail using an electronic data processing system including a plurality of user terminals and a server communicating with the plurality of end user terminals across a network, each user terminal including a graphical user interface having a user interface section with a loading facility arrival time field for presenting a forecast arrival time of a set of railcars at a loading facility, an unloading facility arrival time field for presenting a forecast arrival time of the set of railcars at an unloading facility, a loading facility selection window responsive to user input for selecting a loading facility for the set of railcars, and an unloading facility selection window responsive to user input for selecting an unloading facility for the set of railcars;

• comprising:
• receiving from a user through the loading facility selection window of the graphical user interface of a selected one of the plurality of user terminals information indicating a loading facility for loading a selected set of railcars and through the unloading facility selection window of the graphical user interface of the selected one of the plurality of user terminals information indicating an unloading facility for unloading the selected set of railcars;
• transmitting the received information from the selected end user terminal to the server via the network;
• processing the received information with the server to dynamically forecast an arrival time for the set of cars at a selected one of the loading and unloading facilities in response to events reported to the server by a train including the selected set of railcars during transit of the selected set of railcars between a starting one of the loading and unloading facilities and the selected one of the loading and unloading facilities;
• communicating the dynamically forecasted arrival time from the server to the selected user terminal as updated in response to the reported events;
• and
• displaying the dynamically forecasted arrival time in a corresponding one of the loading facility and unloading facility arrival time fields of the graphical user interface on a display screen of the selected user terminal.