Ties Weekly Update #4

6 May , 2004

 

 

AHEAD OF SCHEDULE

 

As of 6 May, we have installed over 43,000 of the 182,000 ties scheduled to be installed by November 24th 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. The crews completed the Owatonna sub ties on Saturday the 2nd and started the DM&E Waseca sub ties on Tuesday the 4th. We still expect all of the tie installation east of Mankato on the Tracy and Waseca subs to be completed by the end of May. At that time the LA Colo crew will relocate to Sleepy Eye and start tie installation at that location. Production levels on all crews have been above expectations because of high equipment reliability and excellent track time and we expect the tie installation to remain ahead of schedule through out the remainder of the season.

 

 

¨       All crews are on or ahead of schedule

¨       As of 6 May, 135,000 ties have been delivered.

¨       The remaining 47,000 ties are scheduled to be here by July 30, 2004, although there is still concerns over the availability of gons for delivery

¨       DME tie gang in the Lake Preston (Wes Risseuw, foreman) area has completed approximately over 5.0 miles of ties and ballasting.  Surfacing will begin soon behind this crew to remove a 10 MPH slow order.  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  completed the tie installation on the Owatonna sub on Saturday the 1st of May. They then started installing 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 14th.

¨       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.