On one of the last days on this trip to New Zealand, I took a train ride on the TranzAlpine. Being the son of a railway man and having lived in a railway station for the first three and a half years of my life, I grew up with trains and have always loved to travel by train (with trips to Narvik in North Norway and Siracusa on Sicily, to name the longest ones I made).

The TranzAlpine is one of the more famous routes in the world, linking Christchurch on the East Coast with Greymouth on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island. After crossing the wide Canterbury Plains, the train more or less follows the Waimakariri River – often through areas without any roads – and its tributary, Bealey River, up to the railway station at Arthur’s Pass at an altitude of 737m. It then enters the Otira Tunnel which 8.5km further on and 250 metres lower opens on the western slopes of the Southern Alps. The train then quickly descends to Greymouth on the coast. The trip is very special, in that it runs from coast to coast, passing through areas unreachable by other types of transport, winding up the river, surrounded by mountains and crossing various zones with different vegetation like farmland, alpine areas, and rain forest. The mountains in the background are part of Arthur’s Pass National Park.

This photograph was made from the train. It was made with a Canon EOS 6D and an EF 35 mm f/2 IS USM lens. The exposure was 1/640 second at f/5.6 and ISO 200. The photograph was edited in Adobe Lightroom. You can find all of these photos along with others from this journey across New Zealand’s South Island in my album New Zealand 2013 or on Flickr.