RAILROAD POCKET WATCH ARTICLE

Figure 1, left. This Waltham 21 jewel Van-guard pocket watch is a classic railroad watch. Note that the dial has Arabic numerals and that the minutes are numbered around the dial. This is referred to as the “Mont-gomery” dial, and was the standard for most railroad watches.

    Back in the cab again, the watch could face an ambient temperature of a hundred degrees or more. In spite of all of this rough service, the watch had to keep accurate time, needed to run dependably, could not be accidentally reset to a different time, and regardless of its orientation at any moment it could never speed up or slow down enough to introduce any significant error in the displayed time.
    This sounds like quite a challenge for mechanical engineers even today with modern computer- aided design and CNC machine tools. But this was the challenge that the fledgling American watch industry faced during the second half of the nineteenth century as the railroad industry grew at an incredibly rapid pace, and along with that growth was its need for supremely accurate timekeeping. During this period, the railroad industry made numerous changes and initially the watch standards were different from one railroad to another. After a particularly bad head-on train collision that occurred in 1891, alleged to have been caused by a four minute error, standards were made more uniform, and the following requirements may be said to comprise the criteria which a pocket watch had to meet in order to be classified as a railroad pocket watch.
    The watch had to be American made, initially size 18 and later size 16. A size 18 watch could be well over two inches in diameter and 3/4" (or more) thick. (This is a rather formidable pocket watch). The size 16 watch is only slightly smaller, around two inches in diameter. The watch movement had to have at the very least 17 jewels, and 21 or 23 jewel movements were preferred. Because of the wide and sudden possible ambient temperature variations, the watches had to have automatic temperature compensation.
    To set the time on most watches that we are familiar with, you pull out the winding stem slightly and then, as you turn it, the hands will rotate. This, however, was not allowed on a railroad watch. It was possible that in hastily withdrawing such a watch from his pocket, an engineer or train conductor could accidentally pull out the stem and inadvertently rotate the hands. Therefore, all railroad watches required so-called lever-setting. On a lever-set watch, the stem is used both to wind the mainspring and set the time as on a normal watch. However, in order to set the time, it is necessary to open the front bezel of the watch which exposes the end of a small lever that protrudes slightly from under the watch dial. Pulling out this lever shifts internal gearing in the watch and transfers stem rotation from the winding wheel of the mainspring to the hand-setting gearing under the dial. See figure two, below, showing the bezel of the Vanguard of figure one opened, and the lever extended for hand setting.

    The importance of the steam whistle to the steam railroad era cannot be overemphasized, as this audible signaling device not only warned of an approaching train and other possible dangers, but it also heralded the arrival and departure of trains and in many communities the train whistles also served as the local timekeepers, provided of course that the trains were on time.
    Accuracy of time scheduling became supremely important as the railroad industry grew, because severe accidents could and did occasionally result when trains traveling in opposite directions used the same tracks and the train crews were misinformed about the actual time during which a particular train should use the track.
    The science of horology, that is, of time keeping and its attendant methods and instrumentation is an old science; many excellent and quite elaborate mechanical timekeeping devices were already in use by the fifteenth century. Multitudes of highly skilled European craftsmen devoted all or part of their lives and talents to the production of clocks and watches, one of the foremost being Abraham Louis Breguet of late 18th century France, whose watches gained international fame and who developed many significant technical advances which are still in use in today’s best mechanical timepieces.
    Watchmaking in the early years of the United States lagged considerably behind that art in Europe, although fine watches were imported and purchased by those who could afford them. But once railroading advanced and grew, the standards for timekeeping devices became much more stringent than ever before and the American watch industry expanded and attained world prominence.
    Mechanical timekeeping devices could be both complex and delicate machines. Portable clocks and watches tended to be less accurate than stationary clocks, and the railroad environment came with its own additional problems such as rough surroundings which were not at all kind to the accurate functioning of small, delicate mechanisms.
    A pendulum is a very accurate timing device for a clock, but if the clock is aboard a moving train, the pendulum is subjected to many external forces as the train accelerates, slows, goes over rough tracks and makes turns. This renders it useless. The oscillating balance wheel controlled by a precision hairspring is much more accurate in such an environment, but it also is subject to external influences and these had to be overcome before a truly accurate and portable timekeeper became a reality.
    Consider for a moment a typical mid- to late 19th century railroad engineer’s work environment. He was aboard a steam locomotive, in the cab, where coal dust and ash were always present, where temperatures could be uncomfortably high, and where the timepiece could be bumped and shifted about indiscriminately. If the engineer relied on a pocket watch, the watch could be upside-down or right side-up or in any intermediate position and could be moved around, bumped, hit, quickly yanked out of the pocket and looked at, and shoved back again. If it was during winter, and the engineer stepped out of the cab to do a routine inspection, the watch could be subjected to temperatures below freezing.

Figure 2. View of Vanguard pocket watch with front bezel open and hand set-ting lever extended. (black arrow) Such elaborate setting means were adopted to prevent accidental resetting of the watch during normal use.