Ties Weekly Update #3

29 April 2004

ON SCHEDULE

As of 29 April, we have installed 32,000 of the 182,000 ties scheduled to be installed by November 24^th 2004. As of now, it appears we will meet or beat that schedule. We modified the plan by focusing more resources on the IC&E “excepted” track south of Owatonna, thus taking away some of the early effort on the DM&E. We expect those crews redirected to Owatonna will be completed with their work there by this Friday, and will go back to their original assignments on the Waseca subdivision. So that area will be back on schedule soon. We remain slightly ahead of the schedule for the overall tie program.

¨ All crews are on or ahead of schedule

¨ As of 29 April, 130,000 ties have been delivered.

¨ The remaining 52,000 ties are scheduled to be here by July 30, 2004

¨ DME tie gang in the Lake Preston (Wes Risseuw, foreman) area has completed approximately 3.0 miles of ties. This was not scheduled to be done until August, but was moved ahead in the schedule to improve train speeds in the area for the transportation department.

¨ The LA Colo tie gang is now expected to complete the tie installation on the Owatonna sub on either Friday the 30^th or Saturday the 1^st of May. They will then install approximately 20,000 ties east of Mankato on the DM&E before starting at Sleepy Eye with the Supplemental tie program.

¨ After LA Colo tie crew completes the tie installation on the Owatonna sub, we will do some spot surfacing and expect to remove this track from the FRA “excepted” status by May 7^th.

¨ The DME West tie gang (Jim Nemec, foreman) continues to improve on their production numbers and will be installing ties just south of Rapid City for the next several weeks

¨ The IC&E tie crew, under new tie gang foreman Steve Koser, started at Plymouth and are now just south of Austin. We expect this crew to complete the Owatonna sub around the end of May.