[HD] BNSF and UP in Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska on July 19, 2014

On July 19, 2014, I met up with a couple of other railfans. We left at 6:00am and headed over to UP's Greeley Subdivision to catch the Cheyenne Frontier Days Special. After waiting for over an hour, the train showed up and the chase was on. With the lack of chasers on US-HWY 85, it was easy to catch up with the train just north of town. We paced it for a while from Powars (north of Fort Lupton) to about Gilcrest. We then got ahead of it and raced to the town of Ault since they were highballing their stop in Greeley. Once we got our shots in Ault, we raced over to Wyoming and headed for Terry Ranch Road south of Cheyenne near Speer. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the spot we originally planned for but we still got a nice shot of them rounding the curve coming up the grade. Afterwards, we headed into Cheyenne to gas up, get food, and come up with a game plan for our trip eastward. After catching some trains in Cheyenne from both BNSF and UP, we headed east towards Nebraska. We caught one westbound at Egbert, WY. We were hoping to catch an eastbound, but with the time we had, we had to keep pushing east. We got into Pinebluffs and got off the interstate. We got onto US-HWY 30 (Lincoln Highway) and followed the tracks to pretty much all the way to Sidney. We ran into another westbound just outside of Bushnell, NE. We stopped in Kimball and hoped something would show up but nothing. We continued east towards Dix, where we ran into two westbounds. We caught up with another westbound just outside of Potter. We headed for the bluffs west of Potter (Buffalo Bend) in hope of getting a train there. We continued east and reached the outskirts of Sidney where we ran into a westbound manifest, which also met a hot eastbound Z-Train. We finally got into Sidney where we did a pit stop. We decided to change gears and headed north on BNSF's Angora Sub towards Alliance. We reached the first siding north of Sidney, Huntsman. A meet just took place with a northbound coal empty and a southbound manifest. Since we had to start heading back south, we decided to chase the manifest towards Sterling. We caught the manifest south of Sidney, Lorenzo, NE (where they met a northbound manifest), and south of Peetz, CO. We headed south into Sterling to grab dinner and fill up on gas and saw nothing ready to head south. By that time, the return trip of the CFD train already departed Cheyenne. We headed on the interstate and raced 100 miles west to reach Brighton. We arrived into Brighton with about two minutes to spare before the special showed up. A southbound manifest was in the siding waiting for the train to go by. After getting the special, we decided to get the southbound manifest leaving before calling it quits for the day. So fifteen hours, 440 miles, three states, that's one way to have a perfect day with good friends.