Rail carloadings dip slightly, but up overall

OTTAWA — Railway loadings declined in January this year compared with December, but only slightly, says a Stats Can report. However, business is booming for rail. In fact, on a year-over-year basis, tonnage increased at its fastest pace in three years the first month of 2006.

In total, railways loaded 23.3 million metric tonnes of freight in January, down only 1.3 percent from the previous month. But loadings this year were 6.1 percent higher than they were in January 2005, well above the year-over-year pace measured during the previous two years.

Loadings of non-intermodal goods reached 21.1 million tonnes in January, down 1.3 percent from the revised 21.4 million tonnes in December 2005. About 266,000 railcars were needed to load all of January’s non-intermodal freight.

On a commodity basis, potash loadings fell by about a third from December. Loadings of wood from all related commodity groupings showed strong gains. All metallic ores and concentrates showed some decline while their derivatives, the metallic products groupings, all progressed.

Intermodal loadings amounted to 2.2 million tonnes, virtually unchanged from December.