Total U.S. coal rail traffic for the week ended Feb. 24 inched up by nearly 1% year over year to 85,600 carloads, according to data from the Association of American Railroads.
Year-to-date coal rail traffic declined 4.5% through the week, while total rail traffic for the week increased 2.8% year over year to 528,440 carloads and intermodal units.

BNSF Railway Co.'s coal shipment volumes clocked in at 36,013 carloads in the week ended Feb. 24, down 5.5% from last week's 38,101 carloads but up 3.8% compared to 34,704 carloads in the year-ago week.
Union Pacific Corp.'s coal shipment volumes this week were at 21,703 carloads, down 7.9% from 23,567 carloads last week and 7.4% depressed compared to 2017's weekly volume of 23,448 carloads.
Eastern railroad CSX Transportation Inc.'s shipment volumes of coal stood at 16,354 carloads, up 15.8% from last week's 14,120 carloads, and posted a slight increase of less than 1% compared to 16,260 carloads the same week in 2017.
Norfolk Southern Corp.'s coal shipment volumes totaled 18,913 carloads for the week, down by less than 1% from last week's 18,935 carloads and down 4.3% compared to 19,755 carloads of the same week a year ago.
Kansas City Southern Railway Co.'s latest weekly coal shipment volume showed 2,549 carloads, a gain of 4.6% from 2,438 carloads the previous week. The railroad serves 10 U.S. states and Mexico.
YTD coal output slides 6.8%
According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, total U.S. coal production for the week fell 1.6% year over year to 15.2 million tons, compared to 15.4 million tons during the same period in 2017.
For the 52 weeks ended Feb. 24, production was reported at 761.9 million tons, representing a minimal 1% year-over-year recovery, while year-to-date coal output dropped 6.8% year over year to about 115.8 million tons.
The western region's coal production for the week reached 8.3 million tons and posted a 1.9% year-over-year contraction from the prior year's 8.4 million tons. Data for the Western region covers Powder River Basin mines.
Coal production from Appalachian mines totaled 4.0 million tons, up 1.9% from the year-ago week.
The interior region's production fell 5.7% to 2.8 million tons, compared to 3.0 million tons a year ago. 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.
