Traffic on the U.S. rail network continues to weaken in a sign of the slowdown spreading across the industrial economy and efforts by firms to reverse the unplanned build up of inventories throughout the supply chain. The number of railcars and containers carried by the major railroads was down 8 percent last week compared with the same week a year earlier, according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR). For the first 49 weeks of 2015, traffic has fallen 2.1 percent compared with the same period in 2014. At the end of June, rail traffic was down just 0.9 percent year on year, according to the AAR. The slowdown in the industrial economy has deepened, with carloads carrying bulk commodities down 3.8 percent in the first half of the year, down 5.4 percent in the year to date, and down 13.2 percent year on year last week. In the […]