Ties Weekly Update #26

14 October, 2004

CONTINUED EXCELLENT PRODUCTION ON ALL CREWS

As of October 14, 2004, we have installed over 220,000 of the 245,000 ties now scheduled to be installed by November 24^th 2004. The tie crews had an excellent week of production!!

¨ Due to favorability in some of our other projects we have been able to commit to another 10,000 ties in the Quad Cities area and these ties will be installed by the end of this week by Mr. Koser’s crew.

¨ As of October 14, over 240,000 ties have been delivered to our properties and are either installed, on the ground, or in the process of being unloaded by the Brandt truck.

¨ Taking all things into consideration, the siding additions, the siding extensions, the Florence connection and the additional projects, we now expect to install over 245,000 ties this production season.

¨ The Railworks tie crew will finish into Huron today, the 14^th and will load out their equipment over the weekend.

¨ The LA Colo tie gang will complete their portion of the project up to the east switch at Elkton on Friday. This crew will then move to Liberty, Missouri to install 10,000 ties on track 1 between Moseby Jct and Birmingham.

¨ Jim Nemec’s west tie gang has completed the tie installation in the Smithwick area. For the remainder of the year, this crew will be installing ties between Wasta and Wall and will assist with a switch project at Colony.

¨ Wes Risseuw’s tie crew, who has been busy on siding projects for the past several months, will return to tie installation on the 25^th of October on the PRC subdivision on the DM&E west of Pierre, SD. They will install approximately 7,000 ties in this area to finish this year’s tie projects on two properties.