System-Wide Weekly Update #22

16 September 2004

 

          Excellent progress has continued throughout the past week on both CWR projects on the IC&E railroad.  The LA Colo crew completed their portion of the IC&E’s  program earlier this week when they laid the last piece of 136# CWR in the Calmar area.  The IC&E crew continues to lay “curve patch” CWR on the River sub and will finish their portion of the CWR program in November.

          The Railworks tie crew is nearing the ¼ point of the scheduled 22,000 ties to be installed on the Huron sub between De Smet and Huron and the LAColo tie crew will begin installing about 20,000 ties between Tracy and Elkton tomorrow, Friday the 17th.  Both of these projects are expected to be completed by mid to late October.

          Surfacing crews on both properties are doing an excellent job and we expect to complete over 800 miles of surfacing this production season.  We currently have 7 production surfacing crews of our own as well as 3 contract surfacing crews to accomplish these ambitious goals.

          The siding projects continue to progress well with the completion of the Cobden siding just today. This leaves only the Florence connection and siding as major new construction projects to be completed yet this year. 

            The bridge crews are making excellent headway on the Sioux River Bridge near Volga and other crews are rebuilding all of the other structures on the Huron and Tracy subs.

          Two new sets of crossovers for Muscatine and Davenport have been completed by LB Foster at Niles, Ohio and were delivered this past week. The Davenport crossover is being installed this week and the Muscatine crossover will be installed in early October.

 

¨       Equipment problems that have plagued some of the crews, both Company and Contractor, seem to be behind us.  This has improved the productivity of all crews over the past few weeks.

¨       The last shipment of ties for the DM&E project is on the property, leaving only the ties for the Florence connection left to be delivered. All ties have been delivered and unloaded on the IC&E.

¨       Both of our major ballast suppliers have been challenged by this year’s aggressive schedule, but they are both catching up with their stockpiles so we still expect to meet our surfacing goals.

¨       The Cobden siding will be put into service later today and final surfacing will be completed on the De Smet siding extension later this month.