The amount of coal moving over United States railroads for the week ended Dec. 10 was down 5.4% from the same period in 2015, according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR).
AAR reported Dec. 14 that 87,929 carloads of coal moved over the nation’s railroads during the week of Dec. 10.
Year-to-date U.S. coal rail traffic has amounted to more than 3.85 million carloads for a weekly average of 78,697 carloads. That is a 21.4% reduction from the levels recorded during the same period in 2015, according to AAR.
The patterns are similar for North American coal rail traffic as a whole.
During the week ended Dec. 10, 94,945 cars of coal moved over rail lines in North America. That’s down 5.7% from the same week in 2015. The cumulative North American figure for the year-to-date is slightly more than 4.2 million carloads. That’s an average of 85,810 carloads, which is down 20.7% from the same period in 2015.
Coal, however, remains the single largest commodity moving by rail in both the United States and North America, according to the AAR figures.
