Highlights
- Rail activities in September were marked by increases
in cereal grains and canola, as well as in fruits and vegetables loadings.
These goods made up for an increase in loadings of just under 0.9 million
metric tonnes. The automobile sector, affected by the generalized power
outage that struck the eastern part of North America in August, showed
a return to normal with an increase in loadings of 20%. This recovery
brings September's loadings for this sector to a value almost identical
to September 2002. In the mining sector, nickel ore loadings have resumed
after the settlement of a work dispute that lasted almost three months.
Coal loadings were up a sharp 30%, recovering from a 24% drop in August.
- Non-intermodal traffic on Canadian railroads totalled 259
thousand carloadings and 20.5 million tonnes. This represents a 5.0%
increase in tonnage from September 2002 and a 10.8% increase from
August.
- The cumulative total for the first nine months of 2003 (excluding
intermodal loadings) reached 171.2 million tonnes, compared with
179.3 million tonnes in 2002.
The top five commodity groupings, metric tonnes and rail cars
| Commodity Grouping |
Millions of tonnes |
|
Commodity Grouping |
Thousands of rail cars |
| |
|
|
|
|
| Iron ores and concentrates |
2.8 |
|
Iron ores and concentrates |
30 |
| Coal |
2.5 |
|
Coal |
25 |
| Potash |
1.3 |
|
Wheat |
13 |
| Wheat |
1.2 |
|
Lumber |
13 |
| Lumber |
1.1 |
|
Wood pulp |
11 |
These top five groups of commodities accounted for 43.0% of the September
tonnage and for 36.7% of the car loadings.
- Loadings for intermodal traffic, that is "containers
on flat cars" and "trailers on flat cars," totalled 2.2
million tonnes, up 5.9% from September 2002 and 1.2% from August 2003.
Cumulative tonnage for January to September reached 19.5 million tonnes,
compared with 18.2 million tonnes for the same period of 2002.
- Traffic received from the United States destined for Canada
or the United States reached 2.5 million tonnes, up 13.1% from August.
From January to September, U.S. loadings reached 22.3 million tonnes,
compared with 9.6 million tonnes in the same period of 2002.
|
