A method and system for computing the price for shipping goods. The method
includes causing a computer to deliver first information to a user
prompting the user to enter at the computer information about a rail
transportation service for shipment of goods by one or more railcars.
Information about a basic pool of railcars is received and filtered based
on one or more filtering criteria to produce a filtered pool of railcars.
The computer is then caused to deliver second information to the user
prompting the user to select at the computer one or more railcars among
the filtered pool of railcars for the shipment of goods. A price for the
shipment of the goods is then computed at least in part on the basis of
the rail transportation service and the one or more characteristics of
the railcars in the filtered pool of railcars selected by the user.