The B.W. Raymond was always Elgin's standard Railroad grade watch. Father Time and Veritas were names given to their premium, top of the line watches. Was one intended to be superior to the other or are they just two different names for equivalent watches?

Chris while the Lord Elgin was typically the top of the line for Elgin it really depended on the size of the watch as to what the "best" of the grade name was, this is very true for the 12 size and smaller. I think if you look at the 16 and 18 size the name "Lord Elgin" was only used in the 16s, so for the 16s the "Lord Elgin" was the primo name followed by the name "Veritas", with the Veritas sometimes the same grade of Elgin might have Veritas, a grade number name or some other name. A good example of this is the grade 274, since it literally came in all names, Veritas, 274, FT, BWR or no marking. So with the exception of the Lord Elgin, Veritas was typically the best Elgin offered in the 16/18s. Father Time or BW Raymond, Elgin flip-flops with these names at time depending on the time frame. If you look pre-1900 or just a bit after 1900 the FT grade would be considered a higher grade watch, such as the 252, 266, 149 etc and these would be priced higher than a BWR, pre-1900 usually Elgin's 18s FT grades were 21j and the BWR grades were 17j. This changed after 1900 so that if you look at the 3/4 plate 18s movements it was more common to see the BWR priced a bit higer than the FT grade movement of the same type/jewel count. A good example of this situation is on the Elgin site for the 1917 O-N sales cat, the 21j BWR (390) is priced at $50 and the 21j FT (367) is priced at $46.50 with the 21j Veritas at $56.50. It appears that when Elgin transitioned from the full plate to the 3/4 plate 18s movements the FT/BWR pricing swapped so that BWR/FT was more what you saw. Back in the full plate days prior to the early 1900's generally the Father Time name would have been the more expensive model.