Statistics Canada announced Wednesday that Canadian railways carried 231 million metric tons of freight in January, up 4.9 percent from January 2010.
The largest gain in January stemmed from a rise in non-intermodal domestic traffic in addition to traffic received from railway connections in the United States.
Non-intermodal traffic was up 5.4 percent year-over-year in January to 18.8 million metric tons. Railcar traffic from connections in the US rose 8 percent to 2.3 million metric tons in January 2011 from January 2010.
On the other hand, Statistics Canada reports that intermodal freight loadings declined by 2.9 percent in January 2011 to just under 2 million metric tons due to a decline in both containerized cargo shipments and trailers loaded on flat cars.