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  1. The Canadian railway industry saw its operating revenues drop 14.4% to $9.4 billion in 2009 compared with 2008.
  2. Total operating expenses, for its part, decreased 9.8% compared to the previous year to $7.8 billion.
  3. The combined effect of the changes in revenues and expenses resulted in a net operating income of $1.6 billion in 2009, a decrease of 31.3% from the previous year.
  4. Total assets of the railways were $20.4 billion in 2009. CN held 55.8% of the industry's total assets with $11.4 billion, while CP held 33.5% with $6.9 billion and VIA Rail held 4.8% with $986.2 million. Regional and short-haul carriers held the remaining 5.8% with $1.2 billion.
  5. Rail carriers consumed 1.8 billion litres of diesel fuel in 2009 and spent $1.1 billion acquiring the fuel.
  6. Total employment in the rail industry was a little less than 34,700 in 2009, a decrease of 8.0% from 2008 levels, while the average annual compensation per employee rose 1.1% in 2009 to approximately $74,500. Combined, these factors pushed overall compensation down 7.0% to $2.4 billion.
  7. The total tonnage of revenue freight carried decreased 15.7% from 2008 to 278.3 million tonnes in 2009. Similarly, tonne-kilometres fell 11.9% to 299.6 billion tonne-kilometres.
  8. The total number of passengers carried by rail in 2009 decreased 8.0% from 2008 to 4.4 million. The total number of passenger-kilometres also decreased in 2009, falling 10.2% to 1.4 billion.
  9. The commodity with the largest volume transported in 2009 was coal at 29.9 million tonnes.