With a day off from work and a good weather report I decided to spend Wednesday out on the Lakeside sub with a friend Gary Webbenhurst from the Spokane area.  I arrived in Cheney just in time to catch an eastbound hopper train arriving.  I quickly headed to Anderson Rd. where I shot the first train of the day (BNSF 977, 1090, 4953).  After that I headed back into Cheney to meet Gary.   A little after 8am we hit the road and headed west.  The next train was another eastbound which we found out near Tyler.  After turning around we chased it back to Babb where we set up for the shot.  In a few minutes the eastbound hopper train roared by with a small cut of garbage on the head end (BNSF 4669, 7656).  While there I heard a whistle from a UP train so we headed over to those tracks in time to set up for a northbound manifest.  It pull through and then stopped while they switched into the Siding at Cheney (CEFX 1030, 1040).

     Next we headed west again.  We went without seeing a single train and finally decided to stop along Sprague Lake at Pifer, WA.  I was hoping for an eastbound but the Z-CHCPTL arrived first around 10:30am (BNSF 851, 5429, 4576).  Next it was out towards Keystone only to realize that the Z train was meeting one at Keystone.  So we turned around and headed back to our previous spot.   Soon an eastbound auto and TOFC train arrived (BN 7015(patched), BNSF 126, 8010, 535, 6341).  Heading west again we didn't see anything else until we arrived at Ritzville.  Here we found a hopper train sitting in the circular loading track at the elevator just outside of town (BNSF 1109, 5288, 4589).  It was tied down and we couldn't tell if it was loaded or empty.  After getting some pictures we drove on into town.

     In town the gates started going down so we quickly parked and jumped out of the car just in time to get a shot of the Z-PTLCHC rolling through (BNSF 5223, 5318, ATSF 874(patched), BN 9241(patched)).  Next we stopped by a local cafe for lunch.  Hoping for more trains we headed down towards Lind after lunch.  But at Paha it was a long 3 hours before the next train finally arrived.  It was an eastbound stack train coming right out of the sun (BNSF 8637, BN 6837(patched), CSX 4402).  Next we headed down to Lind but met another eastbound hopper train on the way (BNSF 5128, CSX 7329).  Heading up to the top of Providence Hill we arrived a few minutes before another eastbound.  This time a manifest train lead by 4 dash 9s (BNSF 4187, 5127, 1111, 4426).  Following a few minutes behind him was the M-PASLAU with another 4 engines (BNSF 5307, 4807, ATSF 888, 834(both patched)).

     Waiting at the top we heard a westbound coming upgrade so we waited for him.  It turned out to be a loaded grain train with 2 DPUs (BNSF 4432, 5515, 4636, ATSF 681(patched)).  After that we headed back east towards Cheney, WA.  After a quick stop for an westbound hopper train at Lind (BNSF 4325, 5349, 1000, ATSF 898(patched)), we headed on north.  On the way we caught up to the M-PASLAU and then at Tokio we stopped to catch a westbound stack train headed into the siding to meet the M-PASLAU (BNSF 4312, 336).  At Sprague we found the eastbound manifest train we had seen earlier and at Fishtrap the eastbound hopper train.  Then at Babb we found a westbound stack and auto in the siding.  We figured it must be the Z-CHCPTL coming through and a few minutes later the headlights for it showed up (BNSF 4443, 831, ????).  A couple minutes later the westbound stack and auto train pulled out of the siding (BNSF 5242, NREX 5474).  We arrived back in Cheney at 7:30pm and parted ways.  I headed back to the tracks to catch the Lind Turn as it switched some cars at Cheney and then headed home.  It was a fun day even though there were some down times as far as the trains go.