Well, I just got a look at the rail traffic data for the week ending 8/29/2009.
We actually see a fairly sizable increase -- all non-intermodal traffic increased by 2.1% over the previous week:
Two percent may not sound like a lot, but in the world of railroads it is a fairly big deal. Total carloads are now 285,580, well off their low of around 250,000 just a few weeks ago.
Let's look at coal:
Coal loads were up just about the same 2.1 percent. This stands to reason as coal makes up nearly half of all carloads.
Chemicals also showed a fairly good sized jump after being fairly flat:
The week-over-week increase for chemicals was 6.25 percent. Carloads reached their highest level in nearly a year.
Intermodal traffic also showed a fairly good jump, after being virtually flat. Intermodal traffic increased by 4.84 percent -- again a sizable increase for just one week.
These are all pretty good numbers. So, what can we say? This week's numbers provide further assurance that things are starting to pick up.