Surfacing Monthly Update #4

13 July 2005

ALL SURFACING CREWS ARE ON SCHEDULE

The Surfacing crews on the DM&E and IC&E Railroads will have another big year in 2005 with more than 750 miles of track now scheduled to be surfaced. Currently there have been over 300 miles of surfacing completed.

¨ The 53 ballast cars with the air operated gates that were leased for the 2004 season were kept for another year. They will assist with projects which will require an estimated 220,000 tons of ballast. Nearly 110,000 tons of ballast has already been unloaded on the two properties.

¨ We have added 3 contractor surfacing crews to supplement our 8 surfacing crews.

¨ All surfacing crews are now operating on the two properties and over 300 miles have already been surfaced of the 750 now scheduled for this production year. We expect to complete this 750 miles by the end of October.

¨ 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.