who ussed railroad watches

[alan goebes]

My great-grandfather, a carpenter all his life, left me his 23-jewel, lever-set Sangamo Special. I was wondering the other day--how many men who never worked on a railroad purchased railroad watches anyway? Was my great-grandfather an anomaly, or did a lot of men do this? How likely is it that the other railroad watches I have in my collection were ever actually used on a railroad?

[alan goebes]

My great-grandfather, a carpenter all his life, left me his 23-jewel, lever-set Sangamo Special. I was wondering the other day--how many men who never worked on a railroad purchased railroad watches anyway? Was my great-grandfather an anomaly, or did a lot of men do this? How likely is it that the other railroad watches I have in my collection were ever actually used on a railroad?

[Alan Walker]

I would imagine that there were many men who owned railroad watches, yet didn't work for a railroad. However, one must remember that railroad watches were fairly expensive compared to other timepieces that were available. Certainly any men of moderate means could possibly have saved up money to purchase a railroad watch.

There is no surefire way to identify whether a particular watch was used in railroad time service other than knowing who the owner was, unless by some miracle some time service record survives and can be located that identifies the watch by serial number. Railroad time service recordkeeping was meticulous and state of the art in many cases. The sad part is that few time service records survive. I don't know what happened to the records of the private time service companies, but most of the railroad operated time service records either wound up in dumpsters or suffered similiar fates. Anyone who knows anything about railroads will tell you that in later years, what historical items the railroads didn't give away, they pretty much trashed including telegraph instruments, standard clocks, depot furnishings and historical records.

Getting back to watches, the older watches would most likely have been recased at least once. Also, the dials would have shown wear. Watch cases didn't have a particularly long service life when exposed to the elements and use on railroads. Most often, the cases would be base metal or gold fill and often purchased used. Railroad men would usually look to save money whenever possible. They were also more concerned that the case they bought be tight so as to prevent dust and cinders from entering the watch and damaging it. Looks were secondary in consideration. The more worn a watch looks, the better the chance that it was carried in railroad service.

[Tom McIntyre]

I don't have any numbers, but one could do some estimating based on the number of railroad watches produced and the number of railroad employees.

Given Alan's comment about re-use of watches by employees, the actual number might be higher or lower than the total number of employees. I know of studies of the New England mills that have statistics on employees and length of service so perhaps similar data exists for the railroads.

You could also do some long extrapolations from the inspector records that do exist. I think Greg Frauenhof has made a couple of "guesstimates" based on the inspection records he has.

Off the top of my head, I would be surprised if more than 20% of the railroad watches were actually used on the railroad in jobs that required them.

Tom McIntyre
NAWCC 2nd VP Candidate
Tommy the JOAT's Web (http://www.AWCo.org)

[bil2054]

I can offer one example of a non-railroad man who found it advantagous to use a railroad watch. My great grandfather was a carter, and it was important to meet the train on time to off load the consignments.

Bill Miller
NAWCC Member #157710

[Dr. Jon]

My guess is that a lot of non railroaders bought railroad watches. They were a lot of watch for the money and had the cachet that a buyer knew the watch could pass inspection. Even a very high end 23 jewel model was fairly cheap compared to a gold 12 size. For example a Hamilton 992 cost about $35 (maybe $55 in a case) while a 12 size 900 or 920 cost about twice that. The 992 woudl probably be more accurate and more substatial. The 992 was not that much more expensive than the 17 jewel models.

Dr. Jon

[Russ Snyder]

Another non-railroader example: My grandfather had his own masonry business, and carried a 21-jewel Hamilton 992B (C213354). He wanted to know exactly what time his bricklayers "clocked-in" and "clocked-out". Always prided himself in having accurate time. His widow gave me the watch when he died in 1976.

Russ

[Greg Frauenhoff]

I don’t have any data to answer the question of what percentage of RR watches were actually used by RR employees.

However, a number of years ago I discovered some old reports of watches used by employees of the Burlington route in 1889-1890. What makes these reports interesting is that they give the serial numbers of mvts by make along with performance data. The s/ns of the Aurora mvts in these reports have been published in the 2nd edition of my book on Aurora watches. The s/ns of the Columbus mvts will appear in the Feb. Bulletin. One of my projects is to publish a compilation of all 3000 or so mvt s/ns in these reports along with some analysis. In particular, I’d like to compare the performance data for various Waltham and Elgin grades to see if the better grades were, in actual usage, better timekeepers or not. My wife has helped with getting most of the s/ns into a database, but I haven’t yet found time to assign grades, etc., and to compile/analyze all the performance data.

BTW, one interesting mvt that saw RR service was Freeport #9.

Greg Frauenhoff

My Watch Site (http://hometown.aol.com/gfrauen10/gfrauen10.html)

[Alan Walker]

Unfortunately, the records which Greg has seem to be the exception rather than the norm. Most railroads were less than meticulous where it came to keeping records of employees prior to the establishment of railroad retirement in the 1930's. Most railroads destroyed most records, especially those of companies that were acquired or records that were not deemed of any importance (at the time). Whether by policy or practice, business and historical information was lost either through neglect or policy. Even today, the railroad that I work for destroys certain files once they have been held past the timeframe that company policy or applicable laws require. Files to be destroyed are incinerated in the fireboxes of the company's steam locomotives, probably much like what the railroads of old did.

[John Arrowood]

The stationary engineer at the sawmill. It was his duty to blow the warning steam whistle at 6:50AM to tell everyone to come on to work. He blew it again at 7:00 for worktime, 12:00 for lunch time, 12:50 for warning of approaching 1:00pm,at 1:00, then again at 5:00pm for quitting time. The night watchman blew the whistle at 5:30AM as a wakeup call. He used his watchman's clock for time keeping at night.