Canadian rail freight volume was down 6 percent in September

Most of the drop was due to temporary problems affecting ore and grain shipments.

Statistics Canada announced that the country’s railways carried a total of 31.1 million tonnes of freight in September, down 6.0% from the same month a year earlier.

The Federal agency reports that non-intermodal operations (carloads) accounted for all of the drop in the volume of cargo carried, declining 8.5% year over year to 24.6 million tonnes.

A temporary shutdown at a Quebec-Labrador mine site in mid-September affected ore volumes and a terminal maintenance shutdown at the Port of Prince Rupert combined with the slow pace of harvest due to wet weather conditions affected grain shipments.

Intermodal traffic (containers & trucks) in Canada remained steady, rising 1.7% from the same period last year to 3.0 million tonnes in September.

Freight traffic coming from U.S. rail connections increased 8.0% to 3.5 million tonnes.