Calling all Pocket Watch Buffs

Canuck · Apr 7, 2024

Getting ready for the first show of two that four of us will exhibit at in 2024. This is actually a model railroad show with the focus on spectacular model train layouts. Numerous vendors will be there selling items related to the hobby. There will be artists exhibiting art related to railroading 100 years ago or so. Numerous other exhibitors representing railroad museums, etc. We exhibit railroad standard pocket watches, railroad standard wrist watches, and Seth Thomas World railroad clocks. In the picture, 88 pocket watches (mostly railroad standard) arrayed with the display labels that will be displayed with the watch. Come show day, they’ll all be running and set to time. But show day, there might be the odd surprise when we wind them! The show draws between 10,000 and 15,000 guests. We look forward to these shows. This one is the largest show of its kind in Canada.

Alpha · Apr 7, 2024

My apologies but it is the Elgin once more 🤦

TexOmega · Apr 7, 2024

A good, middle-class, workingman's pocket watch👍

noelekal · Apr 7, 2024

Alpha
My apologies but it is the Elgin once more 🤦

I'd own it!

I'd use it!

TexOmega · Apr 7, 2024

Excelsior Park Chronograph
17j 6 column 19 lignes by Minerva
No Incabloc so pre 1940’s

My WM told me it was completely seized w something like a varnish from age and lack of service.

top-notch runner now

TexOmega · Apr 8, 2024

#992/1000 ordered by the US for WWI

Hamilton grade 992

DaveK · Apr 8, 2024

Canuck
Getting ready for the first show of two that four of us will exhibit at in 2024. This is actually a model railroad show with the focus on spectacular model train layouts. Numerous vendors will be there selling items related to the hobby. There will be artists exhibiting art related to railroading 100 years ago or so. Numerous other exhibitors representing railroad museums, etc. We exhibit railroad standard pocket watches, railroad standard wrist watches, and Seth Thomas World railroad clocks. In the picture, 88 pocket watches (mostly railroad standard) arrayed with the display labels that will be displayed with the watch. Come show day, they’ll all be running and set to time. But show day, there might be the odd surprise when we wind them! The show draws between 10,000 and 15,000 guests. We look forward to these shows. This one is the largest show of its kind in Canada.

That’d be a lot of fun!

Pastorbottle · Apr 9, 2024

A jihad on bastard ceramic tiled floors! I’ve always hated the things, they’re so damned hard everything that falls on the them is smashed to bits! My recently refurbished pocket watch that I only got back from the watch doctor last week is fυcked!
As a result of dropping onto the tiles of Satan.
If it had landed on a civilised floor such as timber, it might have a knock or two but no not unforgiving ceramic shit. Even marble, slate, stone and concrete are as soft as cushions in comparison.
Whoever invented to bloody awful things is probably long dead, but I’d like to dig the evil bastard back up and have a few more goes at killing the prick to make sure. There is no death too horrible for such evil 🫨
NOT HAPPY JAN! (Only fellow aussies will get that reference)
This should explain the reference

DaveK · Apr 9, 2024

Pastorbottle
A jihad on bastard ceramic tiled floors! I’ve always hated the things, they’re so damned hard everything that falls on the them is smashed to bits! My recently refurbished pocket watch that I only got back from the watch doctor last week is fυcked!
As a result of dropping onto the tiles of Satan.
If it had landed on a civilised floor such as timber, it might have a knock or two but no not unforgiving ceramic shit. Even marble, slate, stone and concrete are as soft as cushions in comparison.
Whoever invented to bloody awful things is probably long dead, but I’d like to dig the evil bastard back up and have a few more goes at killing the prick to make sure. There is no death too horrible for such evil 🫨
NOT HAPPY JAN! (Only fellow aussies will get that reference)
This should explain the reference

Oh dang. So sorry to hear this 😬

arturo7 · Apr 9, 2024

My phone lives in constant fear.

TexOmega · Apr 11, 2024

Ingersoll-Trenton
19j (“21j performance at 15j prices!”)
RR grade and maybe approved on a spur or two since pendant set.

Post 1908 after Ingersoll bought TrentonWC

roughly 15 or so known to exist out of a total production of 1500.
Serial range #3239721-3467222 scattered in blocks.mine is # 3419407

Canuck · Apr 11, 2024

Time service rules for railroad standard pocket watches were open to interpretation by railroads. Canadian Pacific Railway observed the prevailing standards for the greater part, but they also approved some railroad grade watches that were stem set! I have three or four stem set pocket watches that were accepted by CPR. (All Walthams, as it happens!) From the very inception of standards for railroad approved watches, those standards tended to be in a constant state of flux. (I have only one Trenton pocket watch. But it is nowhere near the Ingersoll-Trenton posted by @TexOmega. Mine is a railroad fake!)

Ingersoll itself was eventually taken over by U S Time Corp. which became TIMEX in the mid-1940s (as I recall.) U S Time started out in the mid-19th century as the Waterbury Clock Co. They were deeply involved in developing what became known as the “dollar watch”. Their attention turned more to watches, and they acquired Ingersoll, Trenton, the German firm Durowe, and likely others.

Alpha · Apr 14, 2024

And again 😀

TexOmega · Apr 16, 2024

Hamilton 950B circa 1950

Hamilton model “A” (no shoulders version) case circa 1948-56.

Cost cutting had set in at Hamilton so, a melamine dial appearing to have a change in direction…….the one with the most micro fractures Without loosing a flake, Wins!!!!😁

Baton hands nicely blued.

Waltesefalcon · Apr 16, 2024

Here's my 1952 950B. It's practically the twin of TexOmega's.

noelekal · Apr 16, 2024

I've been wishing for a 19-jewel Hamilton 944, a slightly uncommon 18 size Hamilton with a total production of 6590 produced between 1905 and 1908. Picked this one up off of Ebay recently. Serial number dates it to 1908.

The watch runs decently, gaining about 30 seconds on a five day "test drive" of both wearing it and alternately resting it on back and on face. I'm not as enthused about the case. I read somewhere that no trainman would buy watches with locomotives on their cases and this one has a worn 1890s-1900s period depiction of a locomotive on its Philadelphia Watch Case Company silverode case with signs of previous case screw marks. A re-cased specimen? What do y'all think?

I missed out on a dandy gold filled 944 a couple months back by being second high bidder. Should have stretched just a bit more.

When serviced, this one ought to be a useful pocket watch though.

Canuck · Apr 16, 2024

My 950B came to me with a melamine dial on it. The dial is in excellent shape for a melamine dial. The dial on the 950B posted by @TexOmega is more typical of the problems with melamine. Several years after I bought mine, a friend presented me with a small aluminum tin with the contents wrapped in tissue. A brand new NOS double sunk vitreous enamel dial that had never seen a watch. That dial is shown in the picture. My friend was in Vancouver 35 years ago, and he visited a watch material place. He asked them if they had these vitreous enamel dials. They had TWO! He bought them both. He owed me a number of favours, so the dial was a gift.

noelekal · Apr 16, 2024

In other news, NAWCC is promoting April 18th as National Pocket Watch Day in their annual thread on the topic. Anyone here intending to observe it this Thursday?

Canuck · Apr 16, 2024

I too have a Hamilton 944. Mine is a private label, bought at an NAWCC mart in Portland, Ore. The watch was being ignored by U S buyers, because the name on the dial is D R Dingwall Limited. Well, it would take a Canadian watch collector to recognize that Dingwall was a jeweller, watchmaker, railroad watch inspector in Winnipeg, Manitoba! At one time he had 22 watchmakers! I was on that like a duck on a June bug. I also bought a private label 940 for a watch inspector in Kenora, Ontario. I love Canadian private label watches.

Canuck · Apr 16, 2024

noelekal
In other news, NAWCC is promoting April 18th as National Pocket Watch Day in their annual thread on the topic. Anyone here intending to observe it this Thursday?

I’m for it! What are you going to wear? I have 50 (or so) to choose from, so I’ll decide by Thursday. It might be my hunter cased Waltham 1877! This one. It’s not a Hamilton grade 946, but I like it.