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Shipping & Logistics · weekly ban:none tA

US rail grain car loading & shuttle train counts (AAR/Class I weekly)

weekly grain car loadings and unit/shuttle train counts by railroad

Feed detail
Measures
weekly grain car loadings and unit/shuttle train counts by railroad
Source
AAR weekly rail traffic report + individual railroad (BNSF, UP) grain car report emails (public subscription)
Access
csv
Cadence
weeklyupdates roughly weekly
Thesis
Shuttle train velocity for grain is a direct proxy for PNW/Gulf export pace competing with barge, useful for basis trades between river and rail-served export terminals
Maps to
grain futures basis, rail equities
Crowdedness
contested
Tier
tA
Ban-risk
ban:none
Where this stands

This is a catalogued data feed with a research idea attached, not a validated edge. Being listed here means it has a specific source and a one-sentence causal mechanism mapped to what it should move — it doesn’t mean it has cleared the five-stage validation gate (point-in-time hygiene, out-of-sample holdout, multiple-testing correction, and the portfolio-layer backstop). As of today, every score on this site is prior-only; zero signals in the catalog have been promoted to “measured” status. See the methodology page for the full validation process and current counts.

Browse the rest of Shipping & LogisticsVessel tracking, port congestion, and freight-rate signals — the physical layer underneath trade-balance and inflation prints.