Calling all Pocket Watch Buffs

Nice! By 1967, 992Bs generally had melamine dials, but yours is double sunk vitreous enamel! The enamel dial is nicer, in my opinion, and the opinions of many.

Melamine? I have to trust you on that one. It sure looks like vitreous enamel to me!

Out of an interest created by your posts on Helvetia watches, I Googled the name Helvetia, and found this Wikipedia article on the origin of the name.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetia

When you dig around a little bit, you find stuff out! Of course, the bust of this very same Helvetia is used as a standard mark on Swiss made articles of 18-karat gold. Satisfying stuff.

Thank you for posting this, it will keep me from needing to buy a 992b today just to post the pics for @Fritz ’s amusement.

It’s a nice looking piece, and great to have more contributions to this thread 👍

I have a twin to your watch, and a friend of mine has one as well. My friend is a retired professional engineer, and he is nuts about railways, and trains. He and his wife have probably travelled on just about every passenger train in the world, today. His Hamilton has hundreds of thousands of miles on it as it times every train trip he has taken over the 25 or so years he has owned. I maintain it in railroad shape for him.

I wore mine on a three week trip from London, to Amsterdam, to Paris, to Geneva, to Rome, and two weeks in Italy. Much of the trip by train. This picture was taken on the train from Geneva to Milan in 2012.

Have a group shot but one of those also in my collection. Hamiliton also did a early electric wristwatch with the same case design I got in the collection need to get it repaired but hard to find someone who works on Hamiltons 505 electric movements.

Ah yes! The famous (infamous) Hamilton Electric model 505 that was supposed to revolutionize the world of wrist watches for railroaders. I have one! Piece of merde if there ever was one! Aside from a lousy design, done too quickly, the louse was not anti-magnetic, at a time when railroads had largely changed to diesel electric. The Achilles heel on the 505 was that Hamilton tried to produce an electric that didn’t need the finicky electric contacts on the earlier 501 model, by feeding power to the escape wheel, and producing a roller table for the bottom balance pivot made of gold. When the gold roller contacted the escape wheel, current was fed to the coil on the balance wheel, giving it impulse. Guess what! The gold roller wore out very quickly. I am so ashamed of this louse that I hadn’t a picture of it in my archives. So I took one, just for this post. I also have 2 model 505 parts movements. Even taking the best parts of the three movements to try to get this louse running, it still doesn’t run!

While Hamilton laid an egg with the Hamilton Electric by rushing the project, Bulova spent about 10 years working on Max Hetzel’s concept of a watch which operated with a tuning fork, battery, and transistorized circuit. When it hit the market, it was almost an immediate success, and a hit, to boot. I have also shown a picture of one of my Accutron Railroaders which I believe to be the first real success as a wrist watch for railroaders. This one with a 24-hour Canadian dial.

Was going to have Rene to work on the 505 but he retired I waited too long on his site he has this guy who took over I shot him an email to see the cost I been letting these 505 sit in the watch box for 10 years a long time will let you know how it works out. It does have a cool design the second hand like a lightning rod.
Sales and Service of Hamilton Electric Watches, Accutrons & Others (unwindintime.com)

Please do let us know how successful the repairs are to your Hamilton 505. I have two Hamilton 501s (a Ventura, and an Everest), and they both run, but they are both lousy performers. I very much doubt that my 505 would be any more successful, so I won’t bother repairing it.

Got a couple here. The Hamilton runs like a champ.

Two watches with potential. One of the very first things I would suggest is that you remove those plastic crystals, and turf them. Older plastic off-gases as it yellows, and the steel hands RUST! It may be too late for the hands as they are, but maybe (just maybe) they could still be salvaged.

The Waltham movement would have originally been in a hunter case (closed face), but the case has been replaced with an open-faced case, and the mechanism has been rotated 90° counter-clockwise.

The Hamilton is a grade 974, but the grade number doesn’t seem to have been marked on the movement. Here is the listing for the Hamilton, from pocketwatchdatabase.com.

https://pocketwatchdatabase.com/search/result/hamilton/1035853

The cases on both watches appear to me to be gold filled (a veneer of gold over base metal).

Thank you Canuck! I may have replacement plexi’s here.

TexOmega weakened my resolve to avoid the pocket watch rabbit hole last summer by offering me a silver cased Waltham similar to a family heirloom watch. Since then I've been haunting Ebay, antique malls, and gun show exhibitors' tables and have gathered up some more pocket watches, probably both hit and miss trash and treasures.

Here's an Illinois Sangamo Special that apparently dates to late 1926, same as my dad who was born in December of that year. It runs well. No service history though so needs attention. DaveK's lanyard is a nice touch.

Bryan, I'm chasing you down the rabbit hole and can't stop!
I inherited a nice railroad watch and have a 1906 Elgin that I want to give to my non-traditional Granddaughter (27) that would fancy a pocketwatch.
Have you a good watchmaker?

I know you have a good fob/strap maker in Dave.....I need to sweet talk him into a purple or multi-colored for my Granddaughter after I get the watch sorted. (notice how we use Euro/UK/Aussie lingo on the forum!)

Haven't said Hi in a while and damn good to see you and a damn fine watch.

Hey Jim!

Been mostly "liking" stuff on the Forum since last fall. I never got the hang of sharing photographs on the cellular phone or the table and just this past weekend got the desktop hooked up after our move.

I'm still using Paul's Watch Shop in Sacramento, California. Raimond's been helpful and attentive for several years. Not keen on shipping watches these days for fear of losing them, but no good watchmakers are close by.

Yeah, noticed that about the lingo. I sound like a Texan, but between friends in the UK, watching British comedies for years, and this forum the lingo does creep in. It's handy too.

This Forum thread is no help for someone who doesn't need to get off into pocket watches.

Great to see you here Jim and know that you are a fellow pocket watch traveler/sufferer.