Antique Waltham Vanguard Railroad Pocket Watch, 1904

Antique Waltham Vanguard railroad pocket watch, 1904.

The watch has a Vanguard grade stem-winding movement of railroad specification which is working nicely.

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.

This particular movement meets all the requirements of being a railroad watch having 23 jewels (diamond endstone), 5 adjustments and a Church 1892 patent regulator. The movement is fully signed and it has the serial number 14,023,434 which dates it back to 1904.

The movement is protected by an inner hinged cover which has a slight indentation.

The watch measures 50mm diameter excluding the winding stem and the loop. The case is 14ct gold filled and was made for Waltham by the Dennison Watch Case Company. Dennisons supplied many of the cases for Waltham UK. The case is in good condition, just one indentation to the case back.

The glass lens is in lovely condition

The signed dial has a short hairline underneath the subsidiary seconds dial and possibly one across the actual subsidiary seconds dial but it is very faint. Blued steel hands.

The watch comes in a new presentation box.

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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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