Well Sunday afternoon my dad and I packed our gear into the car and headed out to the Lakeside subdivision for the evening.  We decided to try a couple of new spots between Fishtrap and Sprague, WA.  First place was an S-curve at the ballast pit (known as Missile Base).  We parked the car and walked to get to the best place.  Well we waited around for a while and nothing came.   In the waiting time I starting working on get some close-ups of flowers and other plants.  Finally about an hour after we got there we heard a whistle of an approaching westbound.  Quickly getting into position we watched as an EMD poked its head around the corner followed by a long string of manifest.  It was the M-NTWPAS at 5:40pm (EMD 9044, BNSF 7879, 6743).  After that we decided to head back tot he car to find another spot.

     Driving down the road towards Sprague we ran into an eastbound manifest.  We quickly did a U-turn and headed back up the grade to find an ok spot since it would be mainly coming out of the sun.  I finally decided to try something a little more in the was of art by having several flowers in the foreground of my photo.  Anyway it went rumbling by with a repainted warbonnet into H2 in the consist (BNSF 740, 4335, 4464, 4459).  On the scanner we had been hearing some UP happenings going on and so we decided to drive over to Wells to investigate.  In the siding we found a train that had lent its lead locomotive to another ailing train.   And since it wasn't going to be moving anywhere anytime soon we headed back to BNSF tracks.

     Upon on arrival we found yet another eastbound manifest (BNSF 4473, BN 9558) climbing the hill towards Fishtrap, WA.  After getting an interesting shot into the sun (that will have to be in B&W to look somewhat decent) we continued on into Sprague.  We drove around a while looking for some good angles and finally decided to head west a mile to the siding itself.  In the siding we found an eastbound hopper train stopped by red lights.  This was good news since we really wanted a westbound to come on down through town.  After waiting a while it finally arrived around 7:05pm in some of the last good rays of light.  It was a grain train with 2 DPUs on the end and yet another repaint from warbonnet into H2 (BNSF 4732, 745, 1101, 1074).

     After it cleared we quickly moved to the other side of the tracks so we wouldn't be stuck while the eastbound hopper train pulled out of the siding.  We decided to shoot it in town with the depot and a big church as a backdrop.  Quickly grabbing the camera we got out photos and then headed out of town following it east (BNSF 4442, 4370, 6341).  We were hoping that it would meet something heading west in one of the sidings but it had green lights all the way past Cheney and so we were out of luck.  We hung out a Babb siding for a little while with hopes that a train would come but finally the light faded altogether and we headed back home.  Not a bad day with 5 trains in 3 hours.