A Rail Gallery administrator rejected claims that the project had released confidential Russian Railways data. In interviews published on November 4, other railway enthusiasts described the website, while the account of the two administrators’ arrests was checked against court records.
Denis Yeskov and Anatoly Nagornov are being held under a Moscow Dorogomilovsky District Court order until December 9. They are charged under Part 5 of Article 274.1 of Russia's Criminal Code, concerning unlawful interference with critical information infrastructure that resulted in serious consequences. Prosecutors allege that the defendants unlawfully obtained and copied commercially confidential information and posted it on their website. A court has not determined their guilt on the merits of the charges.
The VChK-OGPU Telegram channel suggested the case might involve access to Russian Railways' automated traction management system. The administrator described the reports of data being transferred from the system as false and claimed that Russian Railways lawyers were assisting those detained. Other photographers interviewed disagreed about how much of the site's information could be confidential: some details are visible on the locomotives themselves, while certain train-movement data may have been restricted.
Rail Gallery emerged after Russian and Ukrainian contributors to an earlier project, Trainpix, stopped working together at the start of the full-scale invasion. Based on administrators' posts examined by the outlet, the new site had around 168,000 photographs and 2,000 registered users in August 2022; by October 2026, it had about 324,000 images and 22,500 users. The site went offline after the arrests.