RAILROADS & WATCHES: A HISTORY – PART 1

General Railroad History

Railroads have almost always shared an intimate experience with timekeeping as goods and people were transported to and fro, usually on a sort of schedule. We often think of the great American railroads, the Robber Barons, and even the Wild West when we think of trains. In the context of economic history, instead, the United Kingdom and coal may come up. Nonetheless, throughout history, goods have necessitated transport and that had to be done on a schedule.

The history of trains usually starts around the 16 or 17th century, however, going back to ancient times, there was a form of rail transport already used known as rutways. Diolkos was the name of a paved pathway that stretched across the Isthmus of Corinth in 600 BC. The pathway had tracks and goods be pulled along these tracks by animals or slaves, on what were effectively wagons. The traffic along the Diolkos was constant and it was used mostly to transport goods – which is why it is often considered the first railway. Keep in mind this was a 6 km track, in the Mediterranean, thousands of years ago. According to historian Michael J.T. Lewis, public transportation was also part of the Diolkos to an extent, which was in use for hundreds of years until the first century.

Diolkos Ancient Rutway / Credit: TimeToast timeline

Now in the first century, we have left the time of the Greeks and entered that of Roman mining railways. Tresminas was a first century Roman mine with a railway, located in Portugal. Here the groves or ‘rails’ were cut into the rock along the floor of the tunnel of the mine, and used for transporting goods, again with what were basically wagons (platforms on wheels). Wooden ‘rails’ were also constructed but the stone ones are the most durable and therefore left the most evidence. Although evidence in general for these ancient railways is lacking.

Arriving to medieval times, we now come across what were called ‘hunds’. 1550 is often the date given for the first ‘hunds’ in Germany but again Dr. Lewis described evidence as early as the 14th century. ‘Hunds’ were basically hand-propelled train cars, ‘hundstösser’, that were most-often used in mines but also in the transportation of other things like boats over land in Venice (this was also done in Ancient Greece using the Diolkos). Wheeled siege towers were also used in warfare and could’ve been fitted onto large wooden beams to cross moats when besieging an enemy castle.

According to Cardinal Matthäus Lang, Hohensalzburg Fortress in Austria had a funicular railway built at the turn of the 16th century. He wrote about it in 1515 and it is still in operation.

Do note that the key to all of this variety of ‘trains’ is the fact that they are ‘wheeled carts’ pushed or pulled along a track; carved into stone or otherwise. The level of traffic is also a consideration when deciding whether it was truly an early ‘train’ or not.

Hohensalzburg Fortess in Salzburg, Austria / Credit: AFAR Media

Around the turn of the 17th century, some of the first above ground railways, on wooden tracks, appeared in England. These were horse drawn railways used to transport coal and were much closer to the ‘modern’ look with respect to what was described in ancient and mediaeval times.

Now, we’re up to what is considered ‘real’ railway history. The time leading up to and after the development of steam engines.   

Thomas Newcomen improved upon an earlier steam engine built in 1698, with his own version in 1712 that was used to raise water from mines. His engine was in turn improved upon by James Watt, whose engine was far more efficient that the earlier version. Now, it was natural that these early, horse-drawn trains – already used in coal mining – would be combined with the steam engines, also used for the purpose. However, the weight ratio/power ratio was never right – that is until 1804. Cornish engineer, Richard Trevithick had been working on the issue for some time and had made other attempts at fitting steam engines to cars (1802). The first commercially successful steam locomotive was the Salamanca in 1813, using John Blenkinsop’s design/patents. It was used along the Middleton Railway transporting coal between Middleton and Leeds. In 1825, the Stockton & Darlington Railway was founded, the first in the world. It carried 450 people at a speed of 24 km per hour.

1930s Recta used on the London, Midland & Scottish Railway circa 1930s / Credit: Pocket Watches UK

Across the pond in the United States, early trains were the same as those in Europe…without steam.

It was only in 1827 that the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad became the first allowed to take commercial passengers. It opened in 1830 to much excitement in the young nation.

Now, around this same time of course, another development was afoot…one that is of much more interest to us than trains…

Early American Railroad Watches

Early Waltham railroad watches flyer / Credit: Southern Methodist University Digital Collections

Throughout the next decade, the 1830s, railroads popped up likes crazy. They appeared all over the major European capitals and cities. France, Austria; the United Kingdom, of course. The New York Central Railway was opened as was the Champlain-St. Lawrence in Québec. Along with carrying goods, many of these new train lines now carried people with great frequency as well. This meant that the timing of these trips was evermore important. Now, some form of regulation was in place since trains began to be adopted across the Western world. An early account from Bartky in Technology and Culture describes the chief engineer of the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company complaining about the lack of regularity in timekeeping in 1834. Further evidence from the late 1840s describes new rules for engineers regarding timekeeping. Detailing how each engineer would receive a regulated watch at their departure that would then be deposited at the station upon their return. Bartky also describes a Boston business, Bond & Sons, as the regular ‘service point’ for watches used on local trains and there is other evidence that they supplied train companies with watches. Interestingly, this business was that of William Bond who is famous for having made the first American marine chronometer between 1812 and 1815. It had only one sea voyage in 1818. Early railroad watches in America were made by companies like Waltham and Elgin (founded in the mid-19th century), and some of the rules surrounding the which watches on the railroads could be used often included things like being ‘American-made’. This is what helped companies like Waltham and Elgin thrive in the first place and survive in competition with Swiss companies at the time. Waltham particularly thrived after the Civil War, becoming the supplier of chronometers for several railroads. And as we will get into, both Waltham and Eglin were part of the group of suppliers chosen by the Canadian Pacific Railway.

This is now the part where we run right up to what we already discussed last week in our article about Ball Watch Co. When Standard Time was adopted it was very important both to the railroad industry and to timekeeping. Previously, time had been standardized at the local or even regional level. But now, thanks to Scottish-Canadian Sir Sandford Fleming, it would be adopted by the world!

The 20th Century Limited express passenger train leaving Chicago in 1938 on the New York Central Railway

The first railway system to adopt a ‘standard time’ was in England in the 1840s. The entire country was forced to adopt the same time based on London Time, the first being the Great Western railway in 1840. American Charles Dowd made great efforts to have his idea of adopting standard medians for US railways but saw no success. Then it was Sir Fleming’s turn, he was a highly noted railway engineer who had first hand experience in the need for Standard Time as Chief of the Canadian Pacific Railway and become a great advocate of adopting 24 time zones for the world. Now that time was standardized, trains coming and going from farther distances could schedule their treks with greater ease. Although, now that time was standard…the regulation and reliability of watches was only more evident! This was exactly what happened on April 18th, 1891. The incident known as the Kipton Disaster! Two trains, the Toledo Express, which was going along slowly, and the Fast Mail Train No. 14, which was going full-speed crashed killing 9 people. The story goes that the crew of the Toledo Express were ordered to let the Fast Mail Train pass them at Kipton after leaving Oberlin, Ohio, as they were late. The conductor did not check his watch, however, assuming the engineer did. And the engineer’s watch stopped running for about 4 minutes – leading them to leave their current station towards Kipton late! The engineer assumed he had 7 minutes until crossing paths with the train at Kipton but in reality, he only had 3…leading them to crash. The Superintendent of the train line, then appointed Webster Ball to investigate the timing issue and develop an assurance system. Webster Ball was an American entrepreneur who bought into a jewelry busines before growing his own in Cleveland, Ohio.

Ball had watchmakers check the watches used on the line, developing a security system for the entire train line that he then extended to other jurisdictions (including Canada) by 1893. He also established the ‘RR Standard’ and was said to inspect nearly half of the United States’ railroads at his peak. This standard is very important as now, only watches that fell under the RR Standard could be used on railways. 10 years after time was standardized now the tools used to track it were also standardized. There were several known exceptions to those standards however, and more over it Ball’s rules were the most widely adapted; not the first or necessarily the best.

By the beginning of the 20th century, some estimate that the Canadian Pacific Railway had approved about a dozen brands, with many American and several Swiss brands included – like Illinois, Longines, Omega and Waltham and Elgin.

A Note on Dial Variations

An interesting thing that is often mentioned about railroad watches is their dial configurations. Legibility was of the utmost importance for railroad watches (much like with other tool watches, like pilot watches). One part of this was that Arabic numerals were part of the RR Standard. Nonetheless railroad watches came with a variation of dials; some watches emphasized minutes over hours while others had the so-called ‘Canadian’ dial adopted by the CPR. The ‘Canadian’ dial had to have 24 hours on the dial with 13-24 along the inner ring. And you can’t forget the ‘Montgomery Safety Dial’. The Montgomery Safety Dial was introduced in the early 20th century in a professional capacity and presented to the general public circa 1910. Montgomery refers to the inventor who was the General Watch Inspector on the Santa Fe Railway, where the dial would’ve first been used. What was notable about the Montgomery Safety Dial was that it had the minutes written out from 1 to 60 around the dial, in Arabic numerals. This was meant to be legible and for maximum precision in train operations. Montgomery, the General Watch Inspector, became a bit of a celebrity for his invention with several newspaper articles and other correspondence related to the new dial. Elgin was one of the first large companies to adopt this new dial, one of their slogans was “The Dial That Almost the Time Speaks”.

In part two we will look at international railroad and railroad watch history along with examining the developments of railroad watches into the latter half of the 20th century.

By: Andres Ibarguen