Railway Freight Up in February

OTTAWA - Apr 29/15 - SNS -- Canadian railways hauled 7.2% more freight in February than they during the same month last year, according to Statistics Canada, with total volume hitting 25.7 million metric tons (MT).

Domestic rail freight originating in Canada and destined within Canada and other parts of the world rose 8.4% to 22.8 million MT. 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 increased 7.3% to 248,000 carloads. The amount of freight loaded into these cars totalled 20.4 million MT, up 9.7%. The gain was attributable to an increase in freight loadings in several commodity groupings, particularly iron ores and concentrates (up 1.2 million MT), potash (up 327 000 MT) and wheat (up 312 000 MT).

Intermodal freight loadings rose 2.0% to 160,000 units in February. From a tonnage perspective, traffic decreased 1.2% to 2.4 million MT. The decline stemmed from a drop in trailers loaded on to flat cars.

Traffic received from the United States fell 1.4% to 2.9 million MT. The drop was the result of a decrease in non-intermodal loadings.