Daily Rail Intel Brief — North America

Saturday, September 12, 2026

Bottom line

No corridor-level service advisory is supported by the sources fetched this cycle. The available material is aggregate weekly and monthly traffic data plus the Surface Transportation Board's rail service data landing page — instruments that measure volume, not disruption. Accordingly, the fourteen corridors below are reported as status unverified, not as clear. Network throughput for the week ending September 5 was running well above last year, which is inconsistent with a large-scale network outage but is not evidence about any individual corridor.

Service advisories

• Vancouver — Status unverified. No advisory in fetched sources this cycle; carrier and port notices not retrieved [1].
• Calgary — Status unverified. No advisory in fetched sources this cycle; carrier notices not retrieved [1].
• Regina — Status unverified. No advisory in fetched sources this cycle; carrier notices not retrieved [1].
• Winnipeg — Status unverified. No advisory in fetched sources this cycle; carrier notices not retrieved [1].
• Toronto — Status unverified. No advisory in fetched sources this cycle; carrier notices not retrieved [1].
• Montreal — Status unverified. No advisory in fetched sources this cycle; carrier notices not retrieved [1].
• Chicago — Status unverified. The STB reports it has published data collected from the Belt Railway of Chicago in connection with the Board's August 3, 2026 letter; the page states only that data was collected and does not characterize a service problem. Current-week gateway metrics (yard car counts, trains held short, CTCO alert level) not retrieved [1].
• LA/LB — Status unverified. No terminal or rail-dwell advisory in fetched sources; record August volumes at Los Angeles and Long Beach are noted in trade headline listings but do not establish congestion [2].
• Kansas City — Status unverified. No advisory in fetched sources this cycle [1].
• Memphis — Status unverified. No advisory in fetched sources this cycle [1].
• New Orleans — Status unverified. No advisory in fetched sources this cycle; port notices not retrieved [1].
• Houston — Status unverified. No advisory in fetched sources this cycle; port notices not retrieved [1].
• Savannah — Status unverified. No advisory in fetched sources this cycle; port notices not retrieved [1].
• NY/NJ — Status unverified. No advisory in fetched sources this cycle; port notices not retrieved [1].

Network context

For the week ending September 5, 2026, total U.S. rail traffic was 533,545 carloads and intermodal units, up 13.8% year over year — carloads up 8.9% to 234,397 and intermodal up 18.0% to 299,148 [3]. North American volume across nine reporting U.S., Canadian and Mexican railroads totaled 727,511 units, up 12.4%. Canadian railroads reported 94,927 carloads (up 10.4%) and 72,202 intermodal units (up 8.9%); Mexican carloads fell 7.4% to 12,108 [3]. Nine of ten commodity groups posted gains; coal was the sole decliner, down 3,547 carloads to 58,037 [3].

Monthly data runs the same direction: U.S. railroads averaged nearly 297,000 weekly intermodal containers and trailers in August 2026, up 4.4% annually and a new monthly record, exceeding June 2026 [2].

Watch items

• Belt Railway of Chicago data collection tied to the STB's August 3, 2026 letter — a Chicago gateway signal to track, not yet an advisory [1].
• Carrier data corrections on file — a CN grain-metric correction filed August 4, 2026 for report date July 29, 2026, and an NS correction filed July 9, 2026 to the trains-held-by-cause item for report date July 8, 2026 [1].
• U.S.–Canada tariff escalation, reflected in current trade headline listings, as demand-side context for the Canadian corridors; no operational effect established in fetched sources [2].

Coverage gap

To file a verified per-corridor brief, the following feeds are required and were not retrieved this cycle: carrier customer-advisory and embargo notices (CPKC, CN, BNSF, UP, CSX, NS) for weather, derailment and maintenance-window items; the current week's individual STB Class I filings and the Chicago gateway sheet for dwell, cars held by cause and CTCO alert level [1]; FRA and TSB incident notifications; port and terminal notices for LA/LB, Savannah, NY/NJ, Houston, New Orleans and Vancouver; and labor notices for corridors with open agreements. Machine-readable STB Open Data Portal series are labeled beta and carry an accuracy warning, and should be treated as secondary to the filed weekly reports for operational reads [1].

Sources

1. Rail Service Data — Surface Transportation Board — https://www.stb.gov/reports-data/rail-service-data/
2. U.S. rail carload and intermodal momentum continues in August, reports AAR — Logistics Management, Sep 10, 2026 — https://www.logisticsmgmt.com/article/u.s_rail_carload_and_intermodal_momentum_continues_in_august_reports_aar
3. AAR Reports Weekly Rail Traffic for the Week Ending September 5, 2026 — Association of American Railroads — https://www.aar.org/news/aar-reports-weekly-rail-traffic-for-the-week-ending-september-5-2026/