Railroad Grade Pocket Watches | Hacker News Reader

Railroad Grade Pocket Watches

vorticwatches.com

50 pointsakehrer15 comments

It's worth pointing out that basically every quartz watch ever is vastly more accurate than any watch that was ever certified as railroad grade.

The first quartz watch wasn't unveiled until 1969.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_clock

A high accuracy quartz watch is accurate to 10 seconds per year.

https://www.watchtime.com/featured/high-accuracy-quartz-guid...

However, railroad standard was 4 seconds daily. That means that if a high accuracy quartz watch is never checked it may fail the standard within a year. However, a less accurate railroad chronometer will always be checked because it is less accurate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_chronometer

This is some of the strangest logic ever. It will be more accurate because it's less accurate and will be checked more often? Bonkers

If you get the Allen intercept right the quartz will be more accurate.

Unless you cock up the mechanical part. I have recently bought a bunch of cheap wall clocks for the house, thinking you cannot mess up a quartz resonator, right? Turns out, you can by improperly sizing electrical vs. mechanical counterparts. So one of the clocks is late by about 5 minutes per month, and the other one randomly stops, but only when hung on the wall. Works like clockwork for the past 4 months or so since I dumped it in the recycling pile. I guess, the impulses keep coming as you would expect them, just not all of them end up moving the hands.

Ad for some watch company.

Wikipedia article.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_chronometer

Most posts on here are ads, this one was 90% informative and I enjoyed the read and pictures that went with it, some things that the wiki article is missing.

Just a glance at the homepage would tell you this is nonsense.

Most of the homepage is nonsense

The rest of the site might be nonsense to you and me, but I think this page did very well in displaying how much thought was put into ensuring reliability in the design of pocket watch mechanisms in the 1900s.

Either way, I found it a good read.

They've found a "clever" way to put a pocket watch into a relatively cheap machined bronze case to go on your wrist (hello huge watch) and sell it for over 5x the market value of said movements.

Yuck.

>Some of the highest end railroad watches featured what was referred to as an up-down wind indicator. This is called a power reserve indicator on modern watches, and it visually communicates how much wind remains in the watch on a sub-dial at 12 O’clock.

I now want this as a battery life indicator on a smart watch.

I followed the links and found out that the cheapest option is over $3.5K (https://vorticwatches.com/products/railroad-edition-watch-bu...)

I did not buy this watch, and yet, considered it as a gift to a friend who is a watchs mini collector.

The watch has a "story", and when one get a compliment, he can tell the story, and that is perhaps the reason we buy some of our goods, for the story behind the product, for the "making of", never the less as for hte product itself.

Besides, everything assosicated wit htrains and taildrods turns on the imagination nostalgy by many.

That's a pretty crazy upcharge, since the base watches themselves seem readily available in very nice condition for $500-1000 - and even down to about $200 for "working, but looks a bit rough"

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