With school done for the week on Wednesday afternoon, my dad and I left the house just after 7am on Friday April 23, 2004 for a morning of railfanning.  Our destination was the Columbia River Sub known as the Seattle line.  We had heard of some good shots to be had in the area of Waukon, WA and so we decided to check it out.  The day dawned bright and sunny without a cloud in sight and we found our first train at Cheney, WA.  As we crossed the UP main we looked south and saw a BNSF colored nose in the siding.  Driving over to investigate we found it to be a northbound UP manifest train with an ex-BNSF now CEFX leading.   This train turned out to be the consist of the day by far having the front CEFX 7088, UP 2084 UP 4229 CP 8509 CEFX 1014 CP 8575!!  After snapping a couple of shots we were off heading north.

     On the scanner we heard that we an eastbound Z train was just getting into Spokane from the Seattle line so we knew that we had already missed one.  Arriving at Waukon we parked the car and set out following the tracks east.  Not more than 2 minutes later we heard a horn behind us in the distance and hurried forward to get to a little rise for the first train.  We had just enough time to set up before an eastbound stack and auto glided around the corner (BNSF 684, 8013, ATSF 6728 (patched)).  After shooting him we continued down trying to find a place where we had seen a photo from previously.  But it turned up fruitless and so we headed back west to a small cut to wait for another train.

     I decided I didn't like the ground level shot and so started a climb into a nearby pine tree.  Reaching a spot about 40-50 feet above ground I found a spot where the branches parted giving me a nice view of Waukon's elevators, signal and track (above).  About 15 minutes later a horn sounded in just around the corner and a BNSF nose followed seconds later.  What surprised us was what followed the locomotives, a long string of empty coal cars!!  It isn't every day you see an empty coal train on the Seattle line but I guess this is one of those exceptions (BNSF 4358, 9407, 8259).  My dad liked where he had shot his video from and so I climbed down from the tree and set up next to him for another eastbound.  But on the scanner we heard that the H-EVENTW was still a ways out and there was the Z-CHCSSE headed our way out of Spokane.

     We decided to walk back to the car and drive east to Espanola to see if we could get a better shot of the Z-train.  Well the sun just wasn't the right angle, I scraped my hand on a tree I was climbing, and the shot just stunk overall.  Finally the Z-train arrived (BNSF 4399, 4556, 1103, 4691) and I shot my sorry picture before we got back into the car and headed back to Waukon to get the eastbound H-EVENTW which we figured the Z would meet at Edwall.  We were right and about 15 minutes after we got back to Waukon the manifest train passed with a GEVO in the consist (BNSF 5421, 4185, 4732, 5723).  After this it was 10:50am and we hadn't heard of much more coming except for the M-SPOEVE in about an hour.  So we decided to call it a morning and head back home for lunch.  Not a bad day on the Seattle line considering sometimes you get only 2 trains.