Bar chart showing a query from the rail carloadings dataset to show the most recent week of data by railroad. It includes average weekly carloads based on the month to provide a sense of the seasonal expected level. It also includes a calculation of one standard deviation above and below that average to provide a sense of variation around the expected level.

Weekly terminal dwell time data from the Surface Transportation Board’s (STB) Rail Service Metrics. The STB began collecting service metrics from railroads in October 2014. As part of their submission to the STB, railroads provide average terminal dwell time, measured in hours, excluding cars on runthrough trains (i.e., cars that arrive at, and depart from, a terminal on the same through train) for the carrier’s system and its 10 largest terminals in terms of railcars processed. (Terminal dwell is the average time a car resides at a specified terminal location expressed in hours.)

Query from the weekly train speeds dataset that averages grain train speeds for each year, month, and railroad.

Weekly "cars on line" data from the Surface Transportation Board's (STB) Rail Service Metrics. The STB began collecting service metrics from railroads in October 2014. As part of their submission to the STB, railroads provide data on the average (daily) number of cars on line, broken out by car type such as "box," "covered hopper," "gondola," "intermodal," "multilevel (automotive)," "open hopper," "tank," and "other." According to the STB, "each railroad shall average its daily on-line inventory of freight cars. Articulated cars should be counted as a single unit. Cars on private tracks (e.g., at a customer’s facility) should be counted on the last railroad on which they were located. Maintenance-of-way cars and other cars in railroad service should be excluded."

Weekly grain cars loaded and billed data from the Surface Transportation Board's (STB) Rail Service Metrics. As part of their submission to the STB, railroads provide data broken out by state on the total number of grain cars loaded and billed. STB requests railroads include cars in shuttle service; dedicated train service; reservation, lottery, open and other ordering systems; and private cars. The reported cars are separated into three components: (1) total grain cars loaded and billed for shuttle service (or dedicated train service); (2) total grain cars loaded and billed for ordering systems other than shuttle (or dedicated train) service; and (3) the combined total (that is, the total grain cars loaded and billed for all ordering systems).

Grain includes the following Standard Transportation Commodity Codes (STCCs): 01131 (barley), 01132 (corn), 01133 (oats), 01135 (rye), 01136 (sorghum grains), 01137 (wheat), 01139 (grain, not elsewhere classified), 01144 (soybeans), 01341 (beans, dry), 01342 (peas, dry), and 01343 (cowpeas, lentils, or lupines).

Grain shuttle trip data from the Surface Transportation Board's (STB) Rail Service Metrics. Each month, the railroads with dedicated grain shuttle service (BNSF, UP, and CP) provide information on the number of turns their grain shuttles make per month. Shuttle trips per month (TPM) should be reported on an average basis. For example, if a particular train set makes three origin to destination moves and another train set makes five origin to destination moves during the same calendar month, the railroad’s average TPM would be four.

The data applies only to those carriers operating grain unit trains in shuttle service. STB eliminated the requirement for carriers with (non-shuttle) dedicated grain trains to report trips per month "because the disparate data carriers could provide on that type of service would not provide the Board insight into service beyond the velocity data collected elsewhere." STB instructs, "in the first report of each month, railroads operating grain shuttles are required to report their average train trips per month for their system and key destination regions versus planned trips per month for their system and key regions for the previous month."

While STB collected related shuttle trip data as part of its initial collection in October 2014, those data included non-shuttle grain trains and, thus, are not directly comparable with the set beginning March 29, 2017.