Waggonfabrik Talbot

Coordinates: 50°47′09″N 6°06′39″E / 50.785848°N 6.110717°E / 50.785848; 6.110717

Waggonfabrik Talbot was a rolling stock manufacturer founded in Aachen, Germany in 1838. The company was an early pioneer of self discharging freight wagons, and in the latter part of the twentieth century a major supplier to the Dutch State Railways (Nederlandse Spoorwegen).

In the 1990s the company developed the Talent passenger train, and was acquired by Bombardier Inc.. As of 2011 company is part of Bombardier GmbH., and manufacturers passenger rolling stock. Since takeover it is also referred to as Bombardier Talbot.

Bombardier announced the closure of the factory in 2012. From 2013 the plant operated under the company Talbot Services, providing rail vehicle maintenance.

In 1838, Pierre Pauwels and Hugo Talbot founded the Eisenbahn-Waggon-Fabrik Pauwels & Talbot Aachen (Pauwels & Talbot railway wagon factory) near the Adalbert gate (Adalbertsot) on Adalbertsteinweg. The company was founded to supply wagons to the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (Rhenish Railway Company), and was one of the earliest wagon factories in Germany.

Belgian and English industrial knowledge played a role in the early wagonworks, in particular English wagon technology, and Belgian engineers acting as technology transferists; Pauwels, a Belgian stagecoach and wagon maker, had the experience to oversee a wagon-making business, having already delivered wagons from his Brussels wagonworks to the Leipzig-Dresdner Eisenbahn-Compagnie (Leipzig-Dresden Railway Company), whilst Talbot had the necessary Prussian citizenship to be eligible for the Rhenish Railway contract. New production facilities were opened in the Nordbahnhof area in 1845.