The invention provides a locomotive number identification method and system. The method includes the steps that wheel pulse signals output by wheel sensors when wheels on locomotives pass through the wheel sensors arranged on a rail in a detection region are obtained; a radio frequency identification device is used for reading signals including locomotive number information and sent by electronic tags installed on the locomotives, and a locomotive passing message of the passing locomotives is obtained according to the signals, wherein the locomotive passing message at least comprises the number of the locomotives passing through the detection region and the locomotive numbers of all the locomotives; the obtained wheel pulse signals are sent to an image acquisition device; according to the wheel pulse signals, the image acquisition device is triggered to take photos for the locomotives, so that multiple locomotive number photos are obtained, and the multiple locomotive number photos are correspondingly correlated to the wheel pulse signals; and the multiple locomotive number photos are identified, the number of the locomotives and the locomotive numbers of all the locomotives in the locomotive passing message are checked according to an identification result. By the adoption of the method, the identification accuracy can reach over 99.99%.