‘The calendar says spring, but the weather says winter,’ Danneman writes as he describes this photo that he took in Colorado in April 1999. The train in the shot is Amtrak train five, also known as the California Zephyr, which runs between Chicago and San Francisco. It’s pictured climbing the Front Range mountains of the Rockies on its way west In the northern tier of the United States, it takes extremely severe winter weather to stop the railroads running – and to prevent US photographer Mike Danneman from heading out with his camera kit to photograph the trains. As this astonishing book shows. Danneman’s Winter Railroading tome features more than 160 striking images of trains and their crews battling the most frigid of conditions, with enormous snowploughs deployed to smash through snowdrifts and keep travellers and goods moving. The images were taken by Colorado-based Danneman over the course of four decades and snapped at locations across the USA, from Kansas to Wisconsin. He writes: ‘Even when travel gets tough and the snow gets deep – and it hurts to breathe and your face and hands sting – hardy men and mighty machines keep the tracks clear. ‘It might be tempting to put the camera away during the cold months of the year but the photographic possibilities during wintertime are much too grandiose to miss. Winter has a way of making a good train photo into an arresting one.’