And I love it! I'd been looking for a knock-around watch that would be fun to use and wear, and found the ideal candidate: a Swiss Railway clock that you can wear on your wrist! The watch really works like a Swiss Railway clock. When the seconds hand reaches the 12 o'clock position, it stops in place and holds there for two seconds; after the first second of this pause, the minute hand snaps forward precisely to the next minute marker, and after the second second of the pause, the seconds hand resumes normal motion. It's a fascinating...dare I say...complication. Mondaine calls this clock-mimicking complication "Stop 2, Go". Another fun feature of the watch is its timesetting mechanism. When the crown is pulled out, the seconds hand sweeps smoothly to the 12 o'clock position and stops there. Then, the crown functions like a servo controller: turning the crown forward advances the minute and hour hands forward electronically, and turning the crown backward rotates the minute & hour hands backward, electronically. Turning and holding the crown causes the minute and hour hands to advance/retreat swiftly, whereas nudging the crown causes the minute (and hour hand) to move in precise, 1/2-minute increments/decrements. Did I mention that this watch is fun? For the time-keeping purist, the watch does have one peculiarity that he/she should be aware of. Because the seconds hand spends two full seconds hanging out at 12 o'clock each minute, it has to race across the rest of the dial at slightly quickened pace when it's moving. Thus, the seconds hand passes between minute markers in 0.967 seconds. But when you're having this much fun, who cares about those 0.0333 seconds? Here are a couple of additional photos, and a video which demonstrates the Stop 2, Go feature.
@BadAndy -- I called a couple of the local ADs listed on the Mondaine web site, and found one watch in stock at the Pasadena Watch Co. The watch can be purchased online directly from Mondaine at the full MSRP of $675. There are a few grey market listings, but not for less than $600 that I could find. I got the local AD to cover the 9% sales tax in the final price.
Very cute. It's got some funk to it but probably not enough to move me enough to spring for a quartz. I'm waiting for the Tudor Black Bay Blue to depreciate enough to wear that as a knockaround watch
I've bought one some years ago, (a plain quartz not a stop2go, with no lugs) i liked the desighn, it was cheap so i bought it without a second thought. To tell you the truth its been sitting in the watch box since then. I still like the desighn though and especially the red lollipop seconds hand
I've had a couple cheap quartz I've enjoyed, friend as a higher end Citizen that is a dandy. That's sort of the beauty of watches though, the ability to put something functional on your wrist and take pleasure in how it looks while performing the job it was designed for.
These are (were?) also available with mechanical movements (without that stop feature of course). I got mine 20 years ago, but have to admit it gets zero wrist time and is still in NOS state. It has an ETA 2846 (just checked with the loupe), funny enough according to Ranfft this is a day/date movement??? :
wasnte there a thingy going on with apple ? ... e.g. they copied the design for an app in the iphone or so (vague memory)
I opened this thread with both barrels loaded, and then found that the watch we're talking about is one of the very few battery powered computer chip pieces that are completely acceptable!
I reviewed the 35 mm version for Discount Watch Store several years back. I almost used my discount to buy it, but ended up getting Windy a Citizen.
