Western Railroad Discussion > How many trains?

I was talking to a friend this evening.  He's always asking me about derailments and other rail problems.  He asks me how many trains run every day in the US.  I didn't know.  I tried to Google it but found just about everything else you might want to know, but nothing about even an estimate of the number of trains daily.  I know that the number can vary widely, depending on what is included.  Big freights, switch moves, transfer moves, passenger or commuter trains, etc...  So do any of my Trainorders friends have some kind of estimate?    Thanks in advance.

John

Suggest you ask the Assn of American Railroads.  If anyone has it , it would probably be them.

Has to be four digits anyway.
JB

On CSX:

“Increased train length contributed to a significant reduction in the number of trains operated on a daily basis. Year over year, [we] reduced the total number of active road trains per day by approximately 26 percent, or about 222 trains per day,” said Smith.

https://www.progressiverailroading.com/rail_industry_trends/article/Class-I-railroads-continue-the-longer-train-trend--55035


Rounding the numbers for easy math if 222 is about 25% then CSX runs around 1000 per day. Given the rest of the class 1s and short lines I’d guess 6-7k all together.

Posted from iPhone



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/23 17:01 by howeld.

On top of Howelds reply, consider all the locals and switch crews that work, and privately owned trains such as steel mills and the untold thousands of large grain facilities, both those that load and those that unload. A huge number overall. And it sems that any car that stubs a switch and derails is a "derailment". Tough to quantify!
Gonut