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History of the Railroad Watch

1887

American Railway Association held a meeting to define basic standards for watches

 

1891

The train wreck of Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway in Kipton, Ohio became a national disaster. The cause was due to how one of the engineers' watches had stopped for 4 minutes. After the incident, railroad officials commissioned Webb C. Ball as their Chief Time Inspector in order to establish precision standards and a reliable timepiece inspection system for Railroad chronometers.

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1893, General Railroad Timepiece Standards: for high-grade pocket watches used on American rails:

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1. only American-made watches may be used (depending on availability of spare parts)

 

2. only open-faced dials, with the stem at 12 o'clock

 

3. minimum of 17 functional jewels in the movement

 

4. 16 or 18-size only

 

5. maximum variation of 30 seconds (approximately 4 seconds daily) per weekly check

 

6. watch adjusted to at least five positions: Face up and face down (the positions a watch might commonly take when laid on a flat surface); then crown up, crown pointing left, and crown pointing right (the positions a watch might commonly take in a pocket). Occasionally a sixth position, crown pointing down, would be included.

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7. adjusted for severe temperature variance and isochronism (variance in spring tension)

 

8. indication of time with bold legible Arabic numerals, outer minute division, second dial, heavy hands

 

9. lever used to set the time (no risk of inadvertently setting the watch to an erroneous time, when winding the watch with the stem)

 

10. Breguet balance spring

 

11. micrometer adjustment regulator

 

12. double roller escapement

 

13. steel escape wheel

 

14. anti-magnetic protection (after the advent of diesel-electric locomotives)

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