One of the giants of American railroading, the Union Pacific Railroad serves a huge swathe of the Mid and Western United States, from the Great Lakes and the Deep South to the Pacific coast. The vast array of locomotives – over 8,000 – and diversity of loads combined with ever-changing scenery make for fascinating viewing and photography. One minute you can be watching as a fast hotshot double-stack intermodal train carrying as many as 300 containers flies by at over 70 miles an hour; moments later and the local goods is in view, dropping a wagon or two into the local factory complex.

This collection of photographs, mainly from the south-western states, was taken through the lens of a UK-based photographer and attempts to show the reader just a small selection of the scenes and variety that the Union Pacific has to offer.