Import Railway services into Bast and manage create, stop, resume, and delete through the GraphQL API.

The Sync tab (4) imports Railway services into Bast. Synced services show up in the host picker under Railway. Bast talks to Railway over the public GraphQL API. There is no Railway CLI to install.

SSH is native OpenSSH to ssh.railway.com. The SSH user is the service instance ID, not a Unix username. Bast registers a dedicated key at ~/.ssh/bast/keys/railway with your Railway account.

Requirements

An account or workspace API token
Network access to https://backboard.railway.com/graphql/v2

Project tokens (RAILWAY_TOKEN) are too narrow. They cannot list projects or register SSH keys.

Connect Railway

Open Bast and press 4 for Sync.
Select Railway and press Enter.
Choose Connect. Paste the API token.

Bast writes the token to ~/.config/bast/railway-api-token (mode 0600). It is not stored in SSH config, state.json, or Vault. Disconnect leaves the token file in place so you can reconnect without pasting again.

You can also set RAILWAY_API_TOKEN in the environment. The first successful sync copies it into the local token file.

CLI:

bast railway key                 # prompt, or use $RAILWAY_API_TOKEN
bast railway key --key-file path
bast sync railway
bast sync status
bast sync disable railway

If a token is already stored, Bast auto-connects on TUI start and bast sync status, unless you previously chose Disconnect.

What gets created

Each service in each environment becomes an SSH host under:

~/.ssh/bast/sync/railway/config

Host railway_api_web
    HostName ssh.railway.com
    User <service-instance-id>
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/bast/keys/railway
    IdentitiesOnly yes
    ServerAliveInterval 30
    ServerAliveCountMax 3
    StrictHostKeyChecking accept-new

Hosts are grouped as Railway/<project>/<environment>. Connection settings, group, and label are owned by sync.

Stopped and sleeping services stay in the Railway group and are hidden from the host list until you press .. If none are running, the Railway group is omitted from Hosts until ..

How Bast connects

On connect, Bast registers ~/.ssh/bast/keys/railway with Railway if needed, waits if the service is still deploying, then launches your system ssh.

Situation	Behavior
Running (`SUCCESS`)	SSH to `ssh.railway.com` as the service instance ID
Stopped or sleeping	Enter resumes, then SSHs in
Deploying	Waits until the deployment is running

SFTP and scp work. VS Code Remote-SSH is not supported by Railway.

A Railway key fingerprint can only be registered once across all accounts. Bast uses a dedicated key so it does not collide with a GitHub or laptop key already uploaded on railway.com.

Lifecycle

Action	What Railway does
New	Create a service from a Docker image (and optionally a new project), set a start command, deploy
Stop (`o` / `bast railway stop`)	Stops the current deployment
Resume (`r` / Enter on a stopped service)	Redeploys, then SSH
Delete (`d`)	Deletes the service and its deployments

Fork is not available. Railway has no per-service snapshot.

Create options: existing project id or name, or --new-project; image default ubuntu:24.04; start command default sleep infinity so the container stays up for SSH. Images with their own long-running process can override the start command. Creating services bills Railway.

Host keys (Hosts tab)

With the Railway group selected:

Key	Action
`n`	Create a new service
`s`	Sync now
`.`	Show stopped services

With a Railway host selected:

Key	Action
Enter	Connect (resume first if stopped)
`r`	Resume only (when stopped)
`o`	Stop (when running; confirms with `stop`)
`d`	Delete the remote service (confirms with `delete`)
`F`	Open Files (SFTP)

CLI

bast railway new --name shell --new-project bast-sandbox
bast railway new --name api --project my-app --image ghcr.io/example/api:latest --start-command "node server.js"
bast railway stop <host|id>
bast railway resume <host|id>
bast railway delete <host|id> [--yes]
bast connect railway_api_web

Re-sync and cleanup

Press r on the Sync tab (or bast sync railway) after you create, stop, or delete services outside Bast. Disconnecting Railway removes the generated sync config. The API token file and ~/.ssh/bast/keys/railway stay until you delete them.

Railway

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