Railway Age Selects Watco’s Rebekah Garner

Watco’s Rebekah Garner recently received some great news from the executive editor of Railway Age magazine: She’s been named to the latest list of Women in Rail honorees.

“I am absolutely thrilled to be selected as one of the Women in Rail award winners for 2025,” said Garner, who is with the Service Assurance team that provides rail support. “It’s truly humbling to be recognized alongside so many outstanding women in the rail industry, and I’m excited to be a part of such a prestigious group.”

Honorees were selected based on factors such as leadership, community service, and accomplishments. For over a decade, Garner has served on several industry sub-committees that are part of the Interline Revenue Committee (IRC). Among other roles, the IRC helps maintain the accurate data and timely transactions that are critical to North American freight railroads in areas such as cost control, streamlined payments, and operational efficiency. Garner’s involvement included a two-year role as chair of the Waybill Accuracy Task Force.

Garner is credited for helping develop Watco’s Roam, Track Master, and CrewConnect applications. Aaron Coester, her supervisor and VP of Service Assurance for Rail Support, said her success in part comes from taking initiative and being tenacious. He praised her research with Watco railroaders to learn what was needed for the applications, saying that she worked “to understand the ‘why’ of what they’re doing. When you’re asking them good questions and they understand that you’re truly trying to learn from them, they’ll tell you everything.”

Besides up-front fact-finding about current processes and federal requirements that would apply to the apps, Garner was involved in app testing and rollout. And she still gets requests for post-rollout tweaks. Vice President of Operations Keith Collier is someone who has sought Garner’s help with changes to an app. He said that “It’s just amazing that I can sketch something out on paper and say, ‘Hey, I’d like to have a form uploaded in CrewConnect that looks like this,’ and a week later, it’s a masterpiece.”

Garner is among 25 who received the 2025 Women in Rail honor. They will be featured in the November issue of Railway Age.