RailState, the rail industry’s only provider of real-time rail network visibility, independently tracks all freight rail movements across Canada in real-time.
Automotive trains increased the most, growing 40% from December. The largest decrease came from Sulphur unit trains, which declined 36.4%, and Coal unit trains, which fell 23.3%.
CPKC took a larger share of volume in January, outpacing CN by 4.8%. This is slightly smaller than December’s margin of 5.6%.
Prince Rupert
Freight volume to the Port of Prince Rupert fell 7.3% in January. Coal unit trains were down 23.2% from the previous month, while Grain train volume grew 19.4%.
Eastern Ports
Halifax
Train volume to Halifax increased 33% in January driven by a 44% increase in Grain train volumes.
Port of Sydney
Train volume to the Port of Sydney rose 15.4% and 97% of the traffic was Manifest trains.
Thunder Bay
Train volume to Thunder Bay dropped 37% in January. This is in line with seasonal trends and shows the end of the major grain movements from the 2023 harvest. Grain unit trains fell 83% in January.
The end of major grain movements to Thunder Bay shows on both railroads but more so on CN. Total carload movements on CN in January are just 10% of the volume moved in the early fall, bringing CN’s market share of total carload movements to the Thunder Bay region to just 9.8%, down from 27% in December.