PERU RAILWAYS. EUGENIO COURRET A FOLIO ALBUM OF 57 [OF 58?] MOUNTED ALBUMEN PRINTS

PERU RAILWAYS. EUGENIO COURRET A FOLIO ALBUM OF 57 [OF 58?] MOUNTED ALBUMEN PRINTS, 24.5cm x 18cm, by Eugenio Courret of sections of the Ferrocorril de la Oroya, c. 1878?, captioned by hand, in a contemporary brown morocco album, blind stamped ornaments at the corners of each cover, metal central lock partly missing, stamped in gilt "Virginia M. de Moscoso Melgar": Meiggs, Enrique. Collection de leyes, decretos, contratos y demas documentos relativos a los Ferrocarriles del Peru. Lima, 1871. 3 parts in 1 vol., 8vo., original quarter calf, cloth boards, stained and with wear at head of spine [2] Note: The first railway in Peru opened on May 17, 1851 linking the Pacific port of Callao and the capital Lima. This was expanded to form the Callao, Lima & Oroya Railway opened in 1878. The line reached La Oroya by 1893 and Huancayo in 1908. It is the second highest railway in the world (following the opening of the Quinzang railway in Tibet), with the Galera summit tunnel under Mount Meiggs at 4,783m (15,692 ft) and Galera station [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Galera_railway_station] at 4,777m (15,673 ft) above sea level, requiring constructional feats including many tunnels, switchbacks [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Zig_zag_(railway)] and steel bridges. Henry Meiggs, who had left the United States for South America to avoid charges of fraud, was the original contractor for the line. Towards the end of his life he is said to have been the virtual dictator [https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Dictator] of Peru by that time, known as "Don Enrique", with interests ranging from silver mines to cleaning up the city of Lima by building a seven-mile-long park. During the nineteenth century, Lima, Peru was a lucrative market which attracted many foreign photographers. By far the most successful and active was Eugenio Courret, a French citizen whose studios served this South American capital from 1863 to 1935. In 1987, the Courret Archive, of which approximately 57 000 glass-plate negatives are by the Eugenio Courret Studio, were acquired by the Biblioteca Nacional in Lima. See also section frontispiece