Thomas Bury was born in 1811. After training as an architect under A.W.N. Pugin, Bury became an artist. In 1831 two sets of prints were published of his paintings of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. The books published by Rudolf Ackerman were a great success and it has been argued that they are the best known pictures of railways ever produced. Despite the success of his railway pictures, Bury never returned to this subject during the rest of his career. Thomas Bury died in 1877.