Hello punchdrunk,

railway will auto-detect ee as a php app if you have an index.php in your root

and the default builder on railway is now railpack and it uses frankenphp + caddy , you can install the php extensions ee needs (gd, mysqli, pdo_mysql) by adding a RAILPACK_PHP_EXTENSIONS environment variable in your service settings. if you need to tweak server config you can drop a custom Caddyfile or php.ini in your project root. if frankenphp causes any compatibility issues with ee, just fall back to a custom dockerfile which gives you full control

for the database, add a mysql service directly from the railway project canvas and plug the connection variables railway gives you into your ee database.php config

Hope this help you :)

a critical thing you cannot skip isthat railway's filesystem is ephemeral so uploaded images and files will get wiped on every redeploy. attach a railway volume and mount it to your ee uploads directory to keep files persistent