Merry Christmas to you...

The picture on the front of this post card shows how the Canadian Pacific

Railway shops looked at the turn of the 20th Century. The post card was printed after 1908 (the publishing company was started in that year). The Canadian Pacific Railway was incorporated in 1881. If this picture is from 30 years later, that would mean the picture was taken in 1911. For sure, the picture was taken before the start of World War I (1914), because the post card printing from Germany for all the North American post card publishers came to a screeching halt when the war broke out.

Just as the picture on the front of the post card shows the CPR yards from a long time ago; the picture here is what I could find on line that shows the yards as close to today as I can get.

This publishing company, The Pacific Novelty Company was headquartered in San Francisco, California from 1908 to the 1960s. They printed many postcards that were duplicates of postcards published by Edward Mitchell. Mitchell was a partner with other photographers in this publishing company then at some point he bought the others out. A major publisher and printer of view-cards depicting California in halftone lithography. They produced cards in different styles, most of which were printed in Germany; this particular post card says it was printed in Saxony - which is in Germany today; in 1871 Saxony became one of the states of the newly founded German Empire. The Pacific Novelty Company eventually sold off their own printing department to Herman Vogel who renamed it Quadricolor Press. Pacific Novelty went on to produce photochromes that were manufactured in the United States.