开云体育

?
I think I mentioned before that I became interested in railroad history after becoming interested in railroad watches. Railroaders had to submit their watches to an approved inspector and he would indicate on a card if the watch was keeping accurate time. Railroad men could not set their watches, only the approved inspector/watchmaker could. To set a railroad watch, you have to take the cover off of the dial and trip a leaver. They had to keep this card on their person at all times. I have had this filled out Central of Georgia Railway watch inspection card for years but have never been able to get my hands on a TAG version until today. Too bad it was not filled out. The CofG subscribed to the Ball Time Service. Southern used the National Railway Time Service. Your time service or general time inspector oversees the local watchmaker/inspectors and sets the standards for timekeeping and what watches are acceptable for employee use. You see that the CofG man is in fact carrying a Ball pocket watch. A 999B trademark Official Railroad Standard. Ball never made their own watches, they had them made by companies such as Hamilton and this particular watch, according to the serial number, was made in 1951 by Hamilton. The TAG card does contain a tidbit of information about who their general time inspector was. Someone named A. F. Steinhoefel. No idea who he was or, where he was located and what local watchmakers TAG employees were allowed to use. I wish I could find a list of approved watches for TAG. CofG and Southern employees timetables list the local inspector and in the case of later Southern additions, the approved watches. You find something new TAG and gain more questions to go along with it. The TAG card has an area for the inspector to indicate if the watch had been allowed to run down. Some railroads fined an employee if he let this happen. Since RR folks worked revolving hours, some early railroad watches came with a wind indicator which let the employees know when the watch needed winding. Note also that both cards want the inspector to indicate if the pendant (winding stem) was at 12 or 3. Most people maintain that pendant at the 3 was illegal for railroad use. Movements with the pendant at 3 were designed for hunter cases (the watch with the lid over the dial) which were illegal for a railroad man. A watch had to be open faced and have Arabic numerals. Roman numerals were not allowed. I have mostly Ball watches in my collection because I grew up
in a CofG town. In WW1 the wristwatch became popular because it was hard for soldiers to access a pocket watch under all their clothes and gear. Because it was hard to miniaturize a watch to railroad standards of accuracy, the railroad stuck with pocket watches; only approving wristwatches about 1960. As American watch brands began to fade and Ball began to have trouble getting their watches made domestically, they had one model Swiss made about 1960. Hamilton made the last American made railroad pocket watch in 1969 before they closed their doors and the Hamilton name became the intellectual property of a Swiss concern. Railroad men continued carried approved pocket watches decades after the last ones were made.

Warren