Surfacing Monthly Update #6

14 September 2005

SURFACING CREWS CONTINUE ON SCHEDULE

The Surfacing crews on the DM&E and IC&E Railroads will have another big year scheduled in 2005 with more than 925 miles of track now scheduled to be surfaced. Currently there have been over 650 pass miles surfaced this year, over 70% of what is scheduled.

¨ The 53 ballast cars with the air operated gates that were leased for the 2004 season have had the lease extended to 2010 because of the good response the track forces have given them. These cars will continue to be a huge asset for our crews while we unload the over 220,000 tons that will be required for our projects this season. Nearly 150,000 tons of ballast has already been unloaded on the properties.

¨ We added 3 contractor surfacing crews to supplement our 8 surfacing crews across the system earlier this year with one of the contract crews finishing their work last week on the Owatonna sub, one will finish next week on the PRC and one in October on the Kansas City sub. The Company crews will continue working until freeze up across the entire system.

¨ All surfacing crews are now operating on the two properties and over 650 pass miles have already been surfaced of the 925 now scheduled for this production year. We expect to complete this 925 miles by the end of October or early November.

¨ This year we have added a late model 6700 production Tamper to Mike Cherne’s south crew and have cascaded his older 6700 to Bruce Wold’s crew in the Quad Cities. This addition gives us 8 full surfacing crews on the two properties with 6700 production tampers as well as several other tampers for smaller projects.