Album photographique - "Etablissements Arbel - Voyage en Amérique - 1910"

Photograph album – “établissements Arbel – Voyage en Amérique – 1910” An album bringing together 98 original photographs in various formats: 8 pictures in 31,5 x 24 cm, 7 in 22,8 x 16,8 cm, 2 in 23,3 x 16,8 cm and 81 in 13,9 x 8,2 cm. All captions are immaculately handwritten in ink, in French.
Oblong binding in half brown shagreen, spine in four false bands underlined with gilt fillets, first cover gold stamped with the title “établissements Arbel – Voyage en Amérique – 1910,” some signs of wear. Three pages have minor tearing on the lower margin, which does not affect the photographs.
The Arbel company, founded in 1894 under the name Forges de Douai, specialised in the manufacture of special carriages for coal and coke, as well as items of heavy metallurgy such as large stamps, car chassis, tanks, etc.
The photograph album that we offer was, in all likelihood, put together during one of Lucien Arbel's (grandson of the found
er), observation trips to the United States. Several reports of foreign trips can be found in the Arbel archives under 70AQ324 (Rapports de M. Lucien Arbel sur ses voyages à l'étranger. 1909-1947, Archives nationales du monde du travail).
In this album are several wide format pictures of carriages that were damaged and then repaired following rail accidents or collisions. A second part concentrates more on the railway machines in Pennsylvania and New York Central station: the Atlantic and Pacific steam locomotives and the brand new carriages, bearing witness to American savoir-faire. Other photographs show a certain number of mechanical parts: bogies, boxes, operating levers and ratchets, chassis, safety locks, etc.
A beautiful and rare album of high-quality original prints, testimony to the end of the golden age of the American railroad.