Rising Orders for New Railcars: Last week the Railway Supply Institute (RSI) released statistics regarding railcar orders, deliveries and backlog at manufacturing facilities. Notably, the backlog in production was 42,993 units on 1/1/2022, over 5,000 above that reported on 10/1/2021. Here is a summary of the most recent portion of the data RSI released for the current quarter and trailing
| 4th Quarter 2021 | 3rd Quarter 2021 | |
| Orders | 13,477 | 8,607 |
| Deliveries | 8,161 | 8,298 |
This is a great development. There has been a significant decline in railcar acquisition in both the primary and secondary markets for the past couple of years and hopefully this signals a clear and permanent change in the marketplace and the confidence this implies of rail freight traffic in the future is sustained.
From RSI: “The Railway Supply Institute (RSI) is a trade association representing more than 160 companies involved in the manufacture of products and services in the freight car, tank car, locomotive, maintenance-of-way, communications and signaling, and passenger rail industries.”