Abstract: In response to the low efficiency of manual container positioning and container number identification in traditional railway container yards, this paper selected gantry cranes and reach stackers as the research carriers, and proposed a railway container positioning and number identification system based on the BeiDou satellite navigation system (hereinafter referred to as BeiDou). The system integrates BeiDou Real Time Kinematic (RTK) positioning technology and laser ranging technology to accurately determine the starting and ending positions of containers. At the same time, the system integrates a machine learning-based automatic detection and identification model for container number areas to implement precise positioning of containers and automatic identification of container numbers, thus meeting the needs of on-site use. Field deployment demonstrates that the proposed system effectively eliminates the significant positioning errors and low recognition rates inherent in traditional practices, providing reliable technical support for improving the automation level of loading and unloading operations in railway container yards.