With graduation being on the last weekend in May I finished up my junior year of highschool early Thursday morning and then decided to head out for a couple hours of railfanning.  I headed towards Marshall Canyon where I found the M-PASDIL heading east just after 9am.  I chased it down a couple miles to get ahead of it for a shot (BN 7895(patched), CSX 7324, 8505).  Next I heard on the scanner about some UP trains.  I headed towards Marshall to set up for the first one but ended up moving around a little bit before I finally found the shot that that I liked.   The power for this northbound UP train was 3 CEFX lease units in elephant style (CEFX 139, 101, 128).

   I heard that the dispatcher was running the second UP train on the highline to try to save some time so I drove up to the detector at 371.5 and set up for the shot.  It arrived shortly with a mix of manifest and autoracks on the M-HKSK (UP 3362, 2182).  I knew that there had been a westbound hopper train stopped at Lakeside Jct. for the eastbound at 9am and I also knew that he had to move for the UP trains so I decided to not try to catch him.  Instead I just headed towards Cheney, WA.  On the way I met an eastbound stack train near Lakeside Jct.  So I quickly turned around and headed back to the other side of Marshall to get a good shot (BNSF 8627, 536, 7867, NREX 5076).  After that I headed towards Cheney again.

     In Cheney I met an eastbound hopper train but I decided I didn't want to waste the gas to chase it back all the way to Marshall.  Instead I continued west.  I heard that there would be a meet between the westbound Z which was still in Spokane and an eastbound hopper train at Fishtrap so I drove around looking for a good shot.  While doing so I missed an eastbound baretable that surprised me.  I finally decided on a overhead shot from a hill near Missile Base.  At 10:40am the train arrived with 4 engines on the point and several hoppers with the new BNSF logo in the train (BNSF 4100, 4315, 1063, 963).  Next I moved a little closer to the tracks for the westbound Z-train which arrived a little bit later (BNSF 5050, 819, CSX 584).

     From my lookout point up on the hill I had seen several UP engines at Missile Base so I drove over to investigate.  I found that three of them were pulling a ballast train around the circular track to fill up the cars.  I had heard that UP was going to be running some trains over BNSF tracks to Missile Base for ballast this summer because of all the work that is going on between Cheney and Hinkle on the UP tracks.  This was the first train I had seen though and I was happy to catch it.  Then just as I was getting ready to leave I heard an eastbound approaching.   I quickly set up for the shot and pretty soon a long stack train arrived (BNSF 6929, 6850, NREX 5458).  I decided to chase this train back east and stopped for pictures at Fishtrap and again at both ends of Babb.  After that it was around noon so I headed back home for the afternoon.  It wasn't that much but in 3 hours I saw 10 trains!