I came across this Turkish railroad Zenith. It has the correctly stamped caseback for a railroad.

However, I have only every seen them the the monochromatic arabic numerals.

This one doesn't seem correct to me at all. It has a sun ray/starburst dial and it wouldn't make sense that the numerals were luminous - if that is what they are.

Thoughts?

 

Nevermind - the seller confirms that it is a redial.

 

It seems you didn’t attach the pictures.

 

That’s a really nice well done redial

 

I would agree but I cannot unsee some of the really bad numeral spacing



The "1" is sitting a lot higher than the "11", which you can see by the grid in my screenshot.
The 2 is sitting higher than the 10
The 4 is placed much closer to the outer line of the black circle than the 8 and is just about touching the outer line.
The 7 fills the width of the black circle much nicer than the 5, which is closer to one side leaving a gap to the other.
The 1 & 0 of the 10 are much more squished together than the 1 & 1 of the 11.
The 12 is just about touching the outer line of the black circle, the 1 is not, the 2 is, the 3 is not, the 4 is, the 5 is not, the 6 is, the 7 is, and the 8 & 9 are not.

On first glance, the dial looks great but I can't unsee how uneven the spacing on the numerals are.

 

@CaptainWinsor - yes. I thought so too. The zenith and star look pretty close.

@Scarecrow Boat - when you point it out like that - it becomes very obvious.

Does anyone know of a page with information as to the origin of these watches? Were they issued to people working on the Turkish railways?

 

this is amazing. I'm going to have to put grids on all dial photos now!

 

Whoever did the redial was very good. The sunburst pattern looks amazing. I’ve seen a lot of dials where the numbers don’t always align properly so I just assumed this was like that.

 

Found another same Zenith to compare this one
seems legit ??

 

@Kulee-Baba - this deepens the mystery. Could it be exactly the same watch - the strap is different but it has the same crown...

 

Yes could be the strap is different I looked close at the numbers they seem more accurate
placed on the dial as the other one I found only this one on google still a well done redial !

 

I’m still going with my first reaction. Original dial

 

No way that either of those dials are original.

 

Yep saw the auction is still running the dial is been
painted in the description below ! Ok

 

what about that radiating pattern in the center? Isn’t that difficult to do

 

They could have been "blanks", on which the refinish was done.

 

Looking at the placement of the numbers they look like they both came from the same re-dial place. Both stars above Zenith look wrong...

 

I think it is the same watch. There is a white dot just to the right of the 4 in both pictures. The crown doesn't seem to be the original and it would seem to me to be unlikely that two watches have the same crown (unless it was redialed from the same place).

Also, I compared to my TCDD - the font of the numbers for the 13 to the 24 is different.

I think it is a redial with the pictures being of the same watch.

 

the crown looks like a typical Zenith crown from the 50s.