Railway carloadings, January 2015
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Released: 2015-03-25
The volume of rail freight carried in Canada totalled 25.8 million tonnes in January, down 1.3% from the same month last year.
Domestic rail freight originating in Canada and destined within Canada and other parts of the world fell 1.0% to 22.6 million tonnes. These shipments are composed of non-intermodal freight (that is, cargo moved via box cars or loaded in bulk) and intermodal freight (that is, cargo moved via containers and trailers on flat cars).
Non-intermodal freight decreased 1.2% to 249,000 carloads. The amount of freight loaded into these cars totalled 20.0 million tonnes, down 2.1%. The decline was attributable to a drop in freight loadings in several commodity groupings, particularly iron ores and concentrates (down 907 000 tonnes) and coal (down 533 000 tonnes).
Intermodal freight loadings rose 9.5% to 177,000 units in January. From a tonnage perspective, traffic advanced 8.2% to 2.7 million tonnes. The gain stemmed from an increase in containerized cargo shipments.
Traffic received from the United States fell 3.6% to 3.2 million tonnes. The drop was the result of a decrease in both non-intermodal and intermodal shipments.
Note to readers
The survey presents data essential to the timely analysis of the rail transportation industry and its contribution to the Canadian economy. Survey data cover carrier railways operating in Canada that provide for-hire freight service and their transportation of various railway carloading components, such as the number of rail cars, tonnage, units and 20-feet equivalent units.
Data aggregations are available for Canada, the Eastern Division and the Western Division.
The aggregations in this release are not seasonally adjusted.
Contact information
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