An autonomous system for generating and interpreting point clouds of a rail corridor along a survey path while moving on a railroad corridor assessment platform. The system includes two rear-facing LiDAR sensors configured to scan along scan planes that intersect but not at all points and wherein neither scan plane intersects a main body of any rail car adjoined to a rear end of the railroad corridor assessment platform. The system also includes a plurality of high-resolution cameras for gathering image data from a rail corridor. The LiDAR sensors and the high-resolution cameras are housed in autonomously controlled and temperature controlled protective enclosures.