Lone Star State Leads Nation in Rail Innovation
From energy production and manufacturing, to distribution centers and the Gulf Coast ports, freight rail is an important driver of Texas’s economic future. The Lone Star State is a national leader in freight rail innovation, with one of the nation’s biggest railroads, BNSF Railway, headquartered in Fort Worth, where General Electric also builds new high-tech, fuel-efficient locomotives.
Texas’s 52 freight railroads operate over 10,506 miles of track and employ 17,453 in the Lone Star State.* It would have taken approximately 22.1 million additional truckloads to move the 398.2 million tons of freight that moved by rail in Texas in 2017. Intermodal and chemicals make up the majority of freight rail shipments beginning in Texas. Intermodal and nonmetallic minerals are the largest rail imports to the state.
*2017 data
