Railyard management system for managing, assembling, disassembling and validating train consists and monitoring railcars in the railyard. The system provides for the collection of data and the movement of data from lower processing levels to higher processing levels, where an inference engine draws inferences regarding the current state of railcars and train consists within the railyard. The inferences are assigned confidence levels based on the methods and available data used to draw the inferences. The system can be used to track the location and orientation of railcars in the railyard and to validate order and orientation of assets in a train consist.