Total U.S. coal rail traffic for the week ended May 26 rose 2.5% year over year to 84,674 carloads, according to data from the Association of American Railroads.
Year-to-date coal rail traffic increased by less than 1% through the week, while total rail traffic climbed 4.4% year over year to 565,502 carloads and intermodal units.

BNSF Railway Co.'s coal shipment volumes clocked in at 35,067 carloads in the week ended May 26, up 5.4% from last week's 33,265 carloads and 1.1% from 34,678 carloads in the year-ago week.
Union Pacific Corp.'s coal shipment volumes this week were at 17,488 carloads, up 1.7% from 17,200 carloads last week but down 15.8% from 2017's weekly volume of 20,778 carloads.
Eastern railroad CSX Transportation Inc.'s shipment volumes of coal stood at 17,720 carloads, up 21.3% from last week's 14,606 carloads and 21.5% from 14,581 carloads during the same week in 2017.
Norfolk Southern Corp.'s coal shipment volumes totaled 19,906 carloads for the week, up by less than 1% from the prior week's 19,831 carloads but down 5.2% from 21,001 carloads the same week a year ago.
Kansas City Southern Railway Co.'s latest weekly coal shipment volume showed 2,448 carloads, up 11.2% from 2,202 carloads the previous week. The railroad serves 10 U.S. states and Mexico.
YTD coal output down 1.5% YOY
According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, total U.S. coal production for the week slightly increased year over year to 14.8 million tons, compared to 14.7 million tons during the same period in 2017.
For the 52 weeks ended May 26, production was reported at 767.6 million tons, representing a decrease of 1.7% year over year, while year-to-date coal output dropped 1.5% year over year to 303.0 million tons.
The western region's coal production for the week reached 8.1 million tons, a slight increase of 3% from the prior year's 7.8 million tons. Data for the Western region covers Powder River Basin mines.
Coal production from Appalachian mines remained steady year over year at about 4.0 million tons.
The interior region's production numbers went down 3.9% year over year to 2.8 million tons, from 2.9 million tons the previous year. Interior region data covers mines in the Illinois Basin.
The EIA's production data is derived from rail carload estimates.
Data collected by S&P Global Market Intelligence from railroads indicate both cars originated on their lines during the week and cars received from a connecting railroad during the same week.
