The birth of the railway clock and the Great Kipton disaster

The history of the so-called "railroad watch" began in the 19th century, the golden age of the modern railroad industry in the United States. People used pocket watches to tell time and synchronize. While the importance of timekeeping wasn't fully recognized, everyone knew that railroad workers needed an accurate pocket watch to conduct each freight run in an orderly and timely manner.

This problem was somehow taken for granted, leading to an inevitable fatal accident in 1891. On April 1, No. 14, known as the Great Kipton Wreck, a mail train collided with another, known as "Accommodation," in Kipton, a small station west of the university town of Oberlin.

This was because one of the conductors forgot to retrieve his pocket watch. It was then made worse when another engineer's watch stopped working for four minutes before starting up again.


(Great Kipton wreck of 1891)

Things quickly escalated into a disaster that killed the engineers of both trains and nine other employees on board, one of whom forgot to check the time and the other misread it.

As a result, the company hired a fellow Clevelander to investigate the incident. The man initiated a new set of standards for railroad pocket watches.

Well, this story might be familiar to some of you. That's because the guy's name was Webb C. Ball. Yes, the jeweler who founded the Ball Watch Company, which we're all familiar with.
Conversely, it may be unusual that this tragic incident also prompted another American, Abram Bitner, a merchant from Lancaster, to develop reliable pocket watches for the railway industry.

As a shareholder in an American watch company called Adams and Perry Watch Company, Mr. Bitner had been active in the watchmaking scene since 1874.

Two years later, he was appointed company president and was part of two other newly formed companies by the same syndicate, known as the Lancaster, Pennysylvania Watch Company (August 1877 to October 1887). Later, the watch brand was incorporated as the Keystone Standard Watch Company (1886 to 1890).


(Hamilton Watch Factory in Lancaster, Pennsylvania) (Image credit: WatchRepair.cc)

Since the watch company was not profitable at the time, Mr. Bitner took advantage of this opportunity to buy the majority of shares in 1886. Six years later, he founded a company with a new name.

The nickname was after a renowned Scottish lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, who founded Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. This, along with the impetus to once again produce reliable portable timekeeping instruments for the railroad industry, contributed to the founding of the Hamilton Watch Company by Mr. Bitner and a new board of investors in 1892.

Hamilton's opening may have lacked seriousness due to impending decline. But Mr. Bitner's heroic move would later prove fruitful, as the watch company battled through history with considerable skill in producing reliable timekeeping instruments.


Refinement came first

Another Illinois watchmaker, the Aurora Watch Company, merged with the Keystone Watch Company during this time. The acquisition enabled the Hamilton Company to develop some incredibly reliable railroad pocket watches.

This was possible because Aurora was a watchmaker with expertise at the time, specializing in the production of full-plate movements adapted to the requirements of railway service in the 1880s. Mr. Bitner's Keystone was known for its robust "dust-proof" clocks, which covered the aperture plate.


(An 1886 full plate pocket watch, size 18, used in railway service) (Image credit: RailsWest)

The collective efforts of both were combined into one, and Hamilton introduced their first railway pocket watch in 1893. Designed as Grade 936 for their movement – an 18-gauge 3/4 plate pocket watch caliber carrying a total of 17 jewels with double-roller escapement, Breguet hairspring and an exclusive regulator.

The movement was carefully adjusted to five positions to ensure accuracy and built to withstand temperature and isochronism factors. The dial was just as impeccably executed as the movement, enameled white like the base and painted with large Arabic numerals.

A dial with a small seconds hand was typical of a hand-wound movement at the time and is located directly below, without the 6 o'clock numeral.


(First Hamilton timepiece) (Image credit: Heritage Auctions)


(They were serious about the 936 pocket watch movement) (Image credit: Pocket Watch Database)

This railway-themed pocket watch, called "Broadway," was a huge hit in the railway watch market at the time; it was even praised as "The Clock of the Railway" (sorry, Ball Watch).

Praised for its precision and meticulous watchmaking attention to detail, which later became evident in all Hamilton watches, Hamilton produced two railroad-quality pocket watches with its in-house movements for fifteen years from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

They boosted the company's sales and helped it establish a reputation as a master watchmaker in the country. By this time, Hamilton's reliable pocket watches were already the official timepieces of all American expeditionary forces.

Source: Gnomwatches.com