a month ago
Hi Railway team,
I ran into a blocking issue with the Express early-preview builder and couldn't recover through the dashboard.
Environment
Workspace: Internal Tools
Project: bcc65682-0761-4dd0-8a72-52250f8b93b9
Service: hof-vault (f844e8e1-51d5-4bf4-9ccd-21b00490a1f9), environment production
Stack: Next.js 16 (Node), deployed from GitHub HOF-Engineering/hof-vault, branch master
What happened
The service's Builder got set to Express (Early Preview). After that, the Builder card showed "Express — Early Preview" with no dropdown or option to switch back to Railpack/Nixpacks.
Every new deployment then got stuck on "Initializing → Taking a snapshot of the code" — it sat there for 10+ minutes and never progressed, on both GitHub-triggered deploys and manual redeploys.
I added a railway.json with {"build": {"builder": "RAILPACK"}} and committed/pushed it, but it did not override the Express builder — the service stayed on Express and kept hanging at the snapshot step.
At one point the CLI also reported service config at '/railway.json' not found, and the dashboard's Config-as-code view only detected railpack.json, not railway.json — which suggested it was still stuck on an older snapshot and never ingested the commit that switched the builder.
What I tried
Editing/clearing the Config-as-code path
Pushing fresh (incl. empty) commits
railway up from the CLI — this eventually got past the snapshot step (it uploads directly), which is currently my only workaround
Questions / what I need
How do I disable the Express early-preview builder and revert this service to Railpack? Is this a service setting or a workspace-level feature flag, and can you flip it if I can't reach it?
Is it expected that Express ignores the build.builder value in railway.json? If config-as-code can't override the builder, that removes the normal escape hatch when the UI dropdown is missing.
Can you look into why the Express snapshot step hangs indefinitely with no error or logs for this service?
Happy to provide deployment IDs or logs. Thanks for taking a look.
6 Replies
Status changed to Awaiting Railway Response Railway • about 1 month ago
a month ago
The Express builder is a priority boarding feature and is not yet stable in all regions, which is likely why your deploys are hanging at the snapshot step. You can disable it from your service's settings page - look for the Express feature flag toggle, turn it off, and then redeploy. That should revert you back to Railpack and unblock your builds.
Status changed to Awaiting User Response Railway • about 1 month ago
a month ago
Status changed to Awaiting Railway Response Railway • about 1 month ago
a month ago
The previous reply was incorrect - the Express toggle is not visible on your Feature-flags page because the service no longer meets the eligibility criteria, but Express stays enabled in the background. That is why the builder is locked and deploys hang at the snapshot step. Config-as-code also cannot help here since build.builder only accepts RAILPACK and DOCKERFILE, not EXPRESS. Disabling Express for this service requires access beyond what the dashboard exposes. Can you confirm the service you need this on is f844e8e1-51d5-4bf4-9ccd-21b00490a1f9 in the production environment?
Status changed to Awaiting User Response Railway • about 1 month ago
a month ago
yes that is correct.
Status changed to Awaiting Railway Response Railway • about 1 month ago
a month ago
Fixed. I disabled the Express builder on hof-vault by removing the flag that was locking it in the background (it was hidden from your Feature-flags page, so you couldn't reach it yourself).
Now push a fresh commit to trigger a clean deploy, don't use "Redeploy." That builds off your latest code and puts you back on Railpack. A plain redeploy can replay the stuck snapshot.
Status changed to Awaiting User Response Railway • about 1 month ago
a month ago
Its working now. Thank you.
Status changed to Awaiting Railway Response Railway • about 1 month ago
Status changed to Solved Anonymous • about 1 month ago