Query the public-use (non-confidential) Carload Waybill Sample rail dataset programmatically via USDA's Socrata API
domain: agtransport.usda.gov · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Locate the "Public Use Carload Waybill Sample" dataset on USDA's Agricultural Transportation Open Data Platform at agtransport.usda.gov/Rail/Public-Use-Carload-Waybill-Sample/xve5-xb56.
Use the Socrata Open Data API (SODA) endpoint documented on the dataset's Socrata API Foundry page to query rows via HTTP GET with SoQL query parameters.
Optionally register for a free Socrata app token to raise your throttling limits for repeated queries.
For BI-tool access instead of raw API calls, connect via the dataset's OData endpoint (e.g., Excel or Tableau's OData v2 option) for on-demand refresh.
Reference the "Creation of the Public Use Waybill Sample" documentation linked from the dataset page to understand how the public sample was derived from STB's confidential sample.
Known gotchas
This public-use sample is a derived, masked version of STB's confidential Carload Waybill Sample - it will not match the field-level detail of the confidential version obtained directly from STB.
Default (tokenless) SODA API requests share a lower rate limit; register for an app token before querying at volume.
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