Saturday our family went to some friend's house in Rathdrum, ID for lunch.  During the hour that I was inside 4 or 5 trains went by on the BNSF funnel just 100 yards behind their house.  So after lunch I decided to head down to the tracks to check it out.  The day had weather that changed almost as often as the hour hands on a clock!!  First sunny, then rainy, next overcast, and then hail.  But putting all that out of consideration I found a spot and proceeded to wait under a tree.  In just 10 minutes an eastbound blew its horn for the crossing in town and was soon rumbling by me.  Thankfully the rain had stopped and I didn't get wet while I was getting the shot.  It was an eastbound hopper train with 125 cars (FURX 7930, BNSF 6365, BN 7160(patched)).

     After it had passed and sat down to wait again.   Pretty soon I got bored and started working on getting some good flower shots.   Finally 90 minutes later a westbound manifest rolled downgrade into town (BNSF 4846, 843, MRL 322).  And what do you know it but I got lucky and the sun showed his face for the train.  After it cleared off the single line track just a mile to the west an eastbound that had been stopped waiting came rumbling around the corner notching up as it went.  Since it was coming out of the sun kind of I decided to try to do something a little different and so I focused on some yellow flowers in the foreground leaving the train blurred in the background.

     At 3:35pm another eastbound showed up rolling under the now cloudy skies through town.  It was the Z-SSECHC with three C44-9Ws (BNSF 5151, 4046, 4059).  In another 10 minutes the rain hit and by 3:50pm it was pouring down in large drops.  Just about this time a whistle sounded at the crossing in town and I ventured out from under my tree to grab a shot as it rumbled through the downpour.  It was an eastbound stack with an EMDX in the consist (BNSF 5244, 4343, EMD 760).  Just after that train passed my dad and brother showed up and told me that they were ready to head back to our house.  So we walked back to our friend's house to wait a few minutes for my mom.  Just as we got back a westbound went by and 10 minutes later an eastbound headed through!

     We got in the car and headed out just as the sun started to peak out from under the clouds.  Hauser yard was relatively empty with just a stack and auto train and a short auto train both stopped at the west end of the yard.  Continuing on we didn't see anything more until we got to Irvin where we met an eastbound stack and auto with a matched set of EMDs (EMD 9080, 9079)!!  Too bad it was heading east and coming out of the sun.  At Parkwater a long manifest train was just throttling up to pull out of town (BNSF 4320, 5175, 809, 773, 4681).  Yardley was pretty empty too with just the westbound manifest we had seen earlier waiting for a new crew.  In the UP yard a M-SKHK westbound maniest train was sitting waiting to depart (UP 4489, 3556, 2186, 3144).  And that was that last thing that we saw.   Not a bad day at all with some 15 BNSF trains in an afternoon.