Merala Nisioh [Phonetic], 58 was a assistant to the plant manager at our Severin, Romanian facility where she worked for over 32 years.
We also lost Luis Martinez aged 43.
He was survived by his wife and four children ages, 19, 17, 11 and five.
We completed our GBX joint venture post quarter with Steve Menzies and funded the first $100 million tranche of railcars from a newly established $300 million non-recourse credit line established for this business.
Finally, post quarter and almost all in the month of March, we received orders for another 1,700 railcars with an approximate value of $190 million on top of the 3,800 railcars orders received during the quarter worth $440 million in all 5,500 cars worth about $630 million in the space of four months or more.
The added traffic has driven year-to-date rail velocity down by nearly 6% compared to the same period in 2020 or about 2 miles an hour.
Consider that about 148,000 cars have been taken out of storage in North America alone since the peak storage levels of last year, storage statistics have fallen now to 378,000 units, well below what we believe to be the frictional level of storage, 400,000 cars.
We ended the quarter with over $700 million of liquidity, including nearly $600 million of cash and another $115 million of available borrowing capacity.
We expect to add another $100 million shortly.
FTR Associates projects the total rail traffic will grow by 5.7% year-over-year in 2021 and intermodal traffic will grow by 6.4%.
In North America, that's even more bullish and closer to 7% for 2021.
About 30% of our present backlog is in Europe and Brazil.
Regarding the second quarter activity, Greenbrier delivered 2,100 units in the quarter, including 400 units in Brazil.
We received orders for 3,800 units in the quarter valued at approximately $440 million.
Our book-to-bill ratio of 1.8 times resulted in a growing backlog to 24,900 units valued at $2.5 billion.
Compared to Q1, our deliveries in Q2 were down 37% and that followed a 45% decline from Q4 to Q1.
And then, further if you were to do a year-over-year comparison, you guys like all these year-over-year comparisons of Q2, manufacturing revenue was down 59% on 54% lower deliveries.
Our leasing and services team continues to navigate the downturn well with fleet utilization improving sequentially during a time when approximately 25% of the total North American railcar fleet and storage.
Greenbrier's capital market team had a relatively quiet quarter with 100 units syndicated.
Our Management Services Group added another 38,000 new railcars under management during the quarter, bringing total rail cars under management to 445,000 or about 26% of the North American fleet.
GBX Leasing will acquire approximately $200 million of railcars per annum from Greenbrier with the initial portfolio identified from leased railcars on our balance sheet or in backlog.
The joint venture will be levered about 3-to-1 debt to equity during the initial $300 million traditional non-recourse warehouse facility, of which we've drawn the first $100 million and those transition to a more traditional asset-backed securities financing as time progresses.
And you can see that, particularly with what Bill mentioned, our recent orders for 1,700 railcar units in just the first month of our Q3.
The decisive actions we've taken over the last 12 months have positioned Greenbrier to exit the pandemic economy a stronger and leaner organization.
A few quarterly items I'll mention include revenue of $296 million; book-to-bill of 1.8 times made up of deliveries of 2,100 units, including 400 units from Brazil and orders of 3,800 new units; aggregate gross margin of 6%; selling and administrative expense of $43 million, flat sequentially and 20% lower than Q2 of fiscal 2020.
Net loss attributable to Greenbrier was $9.1 million or a loss of $0.28 per share.
EBITDA was negative $1 million.
The effective tax rate in the quarter was a benefit of 62%, due to the net operating losses and tax benefits from accelerated depreciation associated with capital investment in our leasing assets.
These deductions will be carried back to earlier high tax years under the CARES Act, resulting in a $16 million tax benefit in the quarter and cash tax refunds to be received in fiscal 2022.
We also incurred $2.5 million of incremental pre-tax costs specifically related to COVID-19 employee and facility safety.
Including borrowing capacity of $115 million, Greenbrier's liquidity remains healthy at $708 million plus another approximately $100 million of initiatives and process.
Cash in the quarter ended at $593 million, reflecting $48 million of inventory purchasing to support higher production levels beginning in Q3 and the $44 million increase in leased railcars for syndication.
Capital expenditures, net of equipment sales, in the quarter was $9.2 million.
Leasing and services capital spending is expected to be about $90 million in 2021, with about 42% of that already occurring in the first half of the year.
This capital spending includes GBX Leasing, which began operations in Q3 and approximately $130 million of leased railcar assets were transferred into the JV at that point, including some assets, which were already on our balance sheet at the beginning of the year.
An additional approximately $70 million of assets will be newly built or transferred later this year.
Manufacturing and wheels repair and parts capital expenditures are still expected to be about $35 million for the year with spending focused on safety and required maintenance.
And today, we're announcing a dividend of $0.27 per share, our 28th consecutive dividend.
Since the start of our program, the growth of our dividend represents a compound annual rate of 9%.

Summary:
A few quarterly items I'll mention include revenue of $296 million; book-to-bill of 1.8 times made up of deliveries of 2,100 units, including 400 units from Brazil and orders of 3,800 new units; aggregate gross margin of 6%; selling and administrative expense of $43 million, flat sequentially and 20% lower than Q2 of fiscal 2020.
Net loss attributable to Greenbrier was $9.1 million or a loss of $0.28 per share.