North American rail traffic registered gains in April's last full week

For the week ending April 26, U.S. railroads logged 302,108 carloads, up 9.5 percent, and 264,228 intermodal units, up 6.7 percent compared with volumes from the same week last year, according to the Association of American Railroads.

Total combined U.S. traffic climbed 8.2 percent to 566,336 units and nine of 10 carload commodity groups posted gains, led by grain at a whopping 39.3 percent and nonmetallic minerals/products at 13.4 percent. The only decliner was metallic ores and metals at a minimal 0.7 percent.

Through the year's first 17 weeks, U.S. railroads' cumulative carload volume rose 2.3 percent year over year to 4,786,893 units while intermodal volume increased 5.1 percent to 4,251,806 units.

For the week ending April 26, Canadian railroads reported 86,650 carloads, up 5.8 percent, and 60,261 intermodal units, up 11.3 percent. Mexican railroads' carloads rose 4.6 percent to 16,134 units and their intermodal volume climbed 10 percent to 10,303 units.

Through 17 weeks, 13 reporting U.S., Canadian and Mexican railroads handled 6,303,754 carloads, up 0.5 percent, and 5,319,488 containers and trailers, up 4.7 percent compared with the same 2013 period.