News Release

BNSF and CSXT Interline Enhancements Improve Consistency and Transit Times Through Chicago

FORT WORTH, Texas, and JACKSONVILLE, Fla., August 6, 2001:

The Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Company and CSX Transportation, Inc. (NYSE: CSX) today announced changes to their interline carload service through Chicago that improves transit time and service consistency for hundreds of customers.

Among the enhancements, traffic interchanged in Chicago and destined for New York and New England will receive more consistent service with BNSF delivering the Northeast-bound freight directly to CSX. Previously, the freight had been turned over to a local switching railroad which delivered it to CSX. The new run-through BNSF/CSX service eliminates handling and will improve consistency.

Traffic interchanged in Chicago destined for the mid-Atlantic markets of Baltimore, Philadelphia and Portsmouth, Va., will now be assembled by BNSF at its Galesburg, Ill. facility, 155 miles southwest of Chicago. Previously, this traffic was switched in Chicago. The change will result in a transit time reduction of one to two days and performance will be more consistent.

Westbound traffic for BNSF points will now be assembled by CSX in Willard, Ohio, and moved directly to Galesburg and Kansas City, eliminating intermediate handling in Chicago. The move will save a minimum of 24 hours transit time and improve consistency.

The new services are the result of cooperative research between the companies’ service design groups to create more direct and simplified service to interline customers.

“Because of the cooperative effort undertaken by BNSF and CSXT, in some cases customers will see a day or more savings in transit times,” said Mike Giftos, CSXT’s executive vice president, Sales and Marketing. “But in all cases, customers will see more consistent service, and that’s critical to growing our business and providing more truck-like service. As many as 30,000 carloads a year will be affected by the improved service connections,” he added.

“This strategic initiative provides our carload customers with a very competitive service offering between the BNSF network and points in the Northeast accessible to CSXT through the Chicago gateway,” said Pete Rickershauser, BNSF’s vice president, Network Development. “Customers will benefit from equipment turning more efficiently and their products reaching their destination faster.”

A subsidiary of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation (NYSE: BNI), BNSF operates one of the largest rail networks in North America, with 33,500 route miles of track covering 28 states and two Canadian provinces. BNSF is an industry leader in Web-enabling a wide variety of customer transactions. The railway moves more intermodal traffic than any other rail system in the world, is America’s largest grain-hauling railroad, and hauls enough coal to generate more than 11 percent of the electricity produced in the United States.

CSX Transportation and its 35,000 employees provide rail transportation and distribution services over a 23,000 route-mile network in 23 states, the District of Columbia and two Canadian provinces. In New York, 2,800 CSXT employees provide these services over 1,350 route miles. CSXT is a business unit of CSX Corporation headquartered in Richmond, Va.

BNSF Headquarters
BNSF Railway Company
2650 Lou Menk Dr. 2nd Floor
P.O. Box 961057
Fort Worth, TX 76161-0057
Phone: (817) 352-1000