Rail's Banner Spring Collides With a Merger in Limbo and a Picket Line at CPKC

Freight rail is enjoying the kind of spring it has not seen in years, even as the industry's defining storyline, the proposed Union Pacific–Norfolk Southern megamerger, grinds through a regulatory holding pattern with no resolution in sight.

The volume picture is genuinely strong. For the week ending June 6, total US rail traffic rose 7.8 percent year over year, the ninth straight week of gains, powered overwhelmingly by intermodal, which jumped 13.6 percent. Domestic intermodal is up roughly 13 percent for the year, with March setting a record and the momentum carrying through spring. The driver is no mystery: as trucking tightens and diesel stays elevated, shippers are converting freight to rail on mid-length lanes between 550 and 1,500 miles, widening rail's cost advantage.

The merger, meanwhile, remains the industry's slow-motion drama. After the Surface Transportation Board rejected Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern's original application as incomplete in January, the railroads refiled on April 30, and the Board accepted the revised version on May 28. But acceptance came with an asterisk: the STB found parts of the filing unclear or underdeveloped, placed the proceeding, including environmental review, in abeyance, and ordered supplemental information by July 27. Even on the smoothest path, a final ruling on the proposed first transcontinental railroad sits years away.

Labour is supplying the week's friction. An IBEW strike against CPKC has entered its second week, with a federal hearing now scheduled, a reminder that even a booming traffic environment cannot insulate the railroads from workforce disputes. The second half of 2026 will test whether rail can convert this spring's momentum into something durable, or whether tougher year-over-year comparisons and an intensifying merger fight slow the train.