NOSTALGY FOR .........IWC POCKET WATCHES.

This week Thomas Koenig writes about railroad watches (Part 1)
Although railroad watches are known in the USA, often produced by Hamilton, Waltham or Elgin, it is less known that IWC delivered from 1890 to 1910 a considerable number of railroad watches for Italian and French railway company's.Some of them had specific features : custom made.
In 1892 a horrible accident took place in the US, when 2 trains heading in the opposite directions, but on the same track, collided. The responsible stationmasters had watches of which one of them was not indicating the right time. After this event, the railway company's world wide decided to buy only high quality precise pocket watches.......

....Two of the predecessors of the current Italian railway company : Ferrovie dello Stato (F.S.) were equipped with IWC watches. These were Rete Meditarreana (R M) and the Sicilian Rete Sicula (R S). But also "FS" itself, received IWC watches.
The pictures show front-and back side from a watch used by "RM". The abreviation "RM" was misinterpreted for a long time. Reinhard Meis, the author of one of the IWC reference books thought that "RM" stood for "Reichs Marine". Later it was explained as "Regia Marina", but the correct name is "Rete Mediterranea" ( Mediterranian Rail(way)....
Kind regards,
H-G Aberle,
R.Birkenkämper,
T. Koenig,
A v d Meijden,
(alwaysiwc).

At bit OT for IWC, but I inherited my grandfather's Ball Railroad Standard PW. He was in the RR business before the great depression. Ball won a competition in the 1890's to produce for the US Government an accurate PW to be used as the official timekeeper for the American railroad companies. The competition was necessitated by a fatal head on train crash in Ohio in 1890 or so.

Here is my grandfather's RR watch:

Beautiful movement too:

MF delete if this is not considered appropriate for the IWC Forum.