I just moved and I live literally window to a freight train line, unfortunately it scares the crap out of my cats and so I'm trying to find out what the schedule is so that I can close the windows for them, and maybe put a little raspberry pi display screen saying something like "next train arriving in...." Next to my window
I don't know what it's like where you live, but as rule, who knows? There are scheduled trains which are notoriously unreliable, but also unscheduled trains. Basically whenever there is enough cargo to justify a train it gets put out on the tracks and they move it when they can. Caveat: this is for Canada and is largely based on info from some former neighbors who were conductors and brakemen.
My sympathy to your cats.
So real shit they don't track freight trains? That seems kind of inefficient if I'm honest.
Then again I'm not a train professional so what do I know
Freight is definitely tracked but not necessarily scheduled in regular intervals. This is true for both trains and ships. Like it costs so much and the world isn't always that consistent.
But yeah like cp/cn/CSX/ns/BNSF etc all know what's on their lines and where.
However these lines are fully private unlike aviation so there is no requirement to publically provide any data.
For planes position data doesn't even come from the airline but a govt mandated transponder that communicates on public frequency on the aircraft and private websites use a network of recieving radios donated or not spread across the world to provide the public with a service they also try to profit off of. This doesn't exist for trains as far as I know. And I don't think for ships either.
Well that puts a wrinkle in my train heist.
They track them, but they're not all scheduled. If there is enough cargo there they put on a "special" and they will move it between the scheduled trains. Train scheduling and tracking is an art unto itself.