@railroute-ts/mcp

A Model Context Protocol server that exposes railroute-ts to AI agents, so they can compute real railway routes across Europe, India, North America and China ("how far is Rotterdam to Genoa by rail, and does it cross a gauge break?") instead of guessing.

It is a thin wrapper over the railroute-ts public API — no new routing logic. Everything runs locally over stdio; the Europe, India and China (OpenStreetMap) and North America (FRA/BTS NARN) rail networks are bundled, so there are no API keys and no network calls.

Pairs with @searoute-ts/mcp for multimodal sea + rail freight distance and emissions.

Tools

rail_route

Shortest railway route between two points. Returns distance in km, optional duration, gauge changes, train-ferry km, snap distances and the route GeoJSON.

| Argument | Type | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | | origin, destination | station name / UIC code string or [lon, lat] | required | | network | "europe" | "corridor" | "india" | "north-america" | "china" | "cis" | "eurasia" | default europe; corridor = Rhine-Alpine only, faster; india = Indian Railways mainline, accepts IR codes (NDLS, CSMT, MAS, HWH); north-america = US/Canada/Mexico (FRA NARN, coordinates only); china = mainland China + Mongolia incl. HSR; cis = Russia/Kazakhstan/Belarus/Ukraine/Caucasus/Central Asia; eurasia = china + cis + europe merged for land-bridge routes | | speedKmh | number | fills an estimated duration in hours | | electrifiedOnly | boolean | only electrified track | | ferries | boolean | false forbids train ferries (Messina, Rostock–Trelleborg …) | | gaugeChangePenaltyKm | number | extra km per gauge break, to discourage them | | maxSnapDistanceKm | number | reject inputs too far from the rail network | | includeGeometry | boolean | include the route GeoJSON (default true) |

rail_route_alternatives

Up to k distinct routes (Yen's K-shortest), sorted by distance — e.g. Gotthard vs. Lötschberg–Simplon across the Alps. Same options as rail_route; geometry off by default.

rail_station_search

Substring search over the bundled stations — 12,886 European (OSM uic_ref) and 8,476 Indian (OSM ref = Indian Railways code) — or an exact code. Returns name, UIC code and coordinates — resolve "vienna main station" to Wien Hauptbahnhof before routing. Coverage follows OSM tagging: strong in DE/AT/CH/FR/PL/IT, weak in Portugal and Sweden (pass [lon, lat] there).

Install & run

npm install -g @railroute-ts/mcp   # or use npx, below

Claude Code / claude CLI

claude mcp add railroute -- npx -y @railroute-ts/mcp

Claude Desktop / any MCP client

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "railroute": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@railroute-ts/mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Then ask: "Rail distance from Wien Hauptbahnhof to Berlin Hauptbahnhof at 80 km/h?" → Rail route: 754.14 km, ~9.43 h.

Multimodal with searoute

Add both servers and the agent can chain them:

Shanghai → Rotterdam by sea (sea_route, ~19,700 km via Suez), then Rotterdam → Genoa by rail (rail_route, ~1,180 km via the Gotthard base tunnel).

Development

npm install
npm test        # vitest, exercises the tools directly (no MCP transport)
npm run dev     # tsx src/index.ts — stdio server

License

MIT © Mayur Rawte. Network data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL.