OREANDA-NEWS  In the first three quarters, loading by the 30 largest railway operators in Russia fell by 6.9 percent compared to the same period in 2024 and by 11.2 percent compared to January-September 2023. Kommersant writes about this with reference to the Infoline Rail Russia Top rating.

The biggest drop is demonstrated by the Federal Freight Company, which is in second place, part of Russian Railways. During the reporting period, its loading fell by 30.3 percent, to 54.3 million tons. In turn, the leading First Cargo Company, even in a declining market, increased loading by 3.2 percent, to 98.8 million tons.

The fleet of freight wagons not involved in transportation also increased by more than 2.5 times, to 175.5 thousand units. The number of defective railcars increased by 31.5 percent, to 127.2 thousand units, which experts attribute to the massive abandonment of major repairs.

Mikhail Burmistrov, head of Infoline Analytics, pointed out that the current year looks very difficult for railway operators, but the next one is likely to be even worse. Russian Railways is going to raise the empty mileage charge by 10 percent for the second year in a row, in addition to the basic indexation of the tariff by 10 percent.