1907 Waltham Vanguard Railroad Grade Pocket Watch

1907 Waltham Vanguard railroad grade pocket watch.

The watch has a high grade 23-jewel Vanguard movement, railroad grade, which is working nicely. The movement has beautifully patterned plates, screw set jewels and a patent regulator. It is fully signed and the serial number, 16,120,718, dates it back to 1907.

The great North American railroad watch became an institution after a fatal crash in 1891, which was caused in part by the stopping and then restarting of the engineer's watch, which caused it to be four minutes slow. In the early days of railroading, when trains ran by strict time and timetable rules, that four minutes proved to be fatal. As a result, in 1893, the General Railroad Timepiece Standards were adopted, which mandated high grade specifications including a minimum of 17 jewels in the movement, five adjustments and micro-metric regulation.

While this particular watch would not have been used on the railways as it is not lever set, the specification was still at the required high levels and these high grade watches were purchased by other professionals and also civilians.

The watch measures 50mm diameter excluding the winding stem and the loop. The case is the gold filled Fortune model from the Canadian watch case manufacturer, the American Watch Case Company. It is in beautiful condition and the screw-on case back has an image of leaves and birds.

The acrylic lens is in good condition.

The signed single sunk dial has blued steel hands, a subsidiary seconds dial and an outer minute track. It is all in very nice condition.

The watch comes in an antique presentation box from Fattorini of Skipton, one of the retailers of Waltham watches.

ALL PRICES INCLUDE UK POSTAGE (because of GPSR legislation, we no longer post items less than 100 years old to Europe, including Northern Ireland).

Please contact us regarding international shipping.

All of our watches are checked over before listing, and are also checked for accuracy which is usually within around +/- two to three minutes over 24 hours (unless otherwise stated), which is considered respectable for a vintage watch.

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