Hi all,
Just want any info on this Waterbury watch. I understood that they were all dollar type watches, but this looked a little better ? Also seeing as they were only in production in the late 1800's, this looked out of place ? Could not find any info in Shugarts, so naturally am looking here for info.
Thanks in advance,
Bill

mvmt

mvmt 2

Bill does it say Waterbury on the movement? To me it looks a heck of a lot like a Trenton and if I look at the dial I see T W C or Trenton Watch Company, or you could say Waterbury T? Company. To me it looks like a earlier 7 jewel Trenton and no they are not cheap dollar watches, while not as in the price range as and Elgin, Waltham, Illinois etc they were still better than the dollar watches, these also still had a full train where many dollar watches had stamped plates and a reduced train. I think Trenton Watch company was later bought by Ingersol watch company who made dollar watches, so the name was later Ingersol Trenton watch company. Look under Trenton and see if the movement doesn't match some of the ones posted for Trenton.

Hi Claude,
Thanks for pointing me in what appears to be the correct direction. This was sold to me as a Waterbury, and the logo looked quite similar, so I just looked in that direction. I did look up the Trenton watches, and there is a very similar movement there, and after looking at the logo a little more closely, I agree it seems to be TWCo.
Thanks for the info.
Bill

I have a few Trenton watches, most are 7 jewel, a few 15 jewel and later they made a 19j version that is a 3 finger bridge movement and very nice looking. I have a nice example of the 19j that I can post some pictures of and you see the likeness.

I concur

regards,
bb

Buster;

You know your watches...it is indeed a Trenton, or appears to be. Claude, that 19J is a scarce one, and I think it was RR approved, wasn;t it?

There are surly watch collectors that if you say a Ingersoll-Trenton or a Trenton 19J is RR approved they will jump up and down and throw temper tantrums and acuse you of having poo-poo for brains. The watch is 19j adjusted to 5 positions so I there is no reason for it to not be RR approved, especially when pendent set watches were still accepted in RR use, at the minimum they would be RR grade. Mine is a later version since it is marked Ingersoll-Trenton rather than being marked Trenton. It is a nice watch and I would suggest one to anyone who is willing to get off the beaten path.

Tom, I agree, Buster knows his stuff....

As far as the Trenton being a RR watch, I'm not sure but here is a list that lists the watches that were RR approved.... Rail Road Approved Watches

Regards,

Jerry

I would disagree quite a bit with the list. If you wanted a list that would cover all RR companies then that list is safe but there were many major companies that accepted adjusted to 3 positions or better up until the early 1920's Sante Fe was one of them. So if you worked for AT&SF under Mr. Montgomery's oversight you could have easily purchased an Elgin grade 412, grade 342, grade 466 adj 4 pos along with a few others. I think in the early 1900's there were close to 200 class 1 RR companies in the 1910-1930 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...s_(1910%E2%80%931929) Probably of all those railroad companies there is probably 20% or less where there is actually something that exists to show what their standards were.

It seems to me you are probably correct Claude.... by looking at the list it seems to me that there were many more watches that were RR capable, but whether they were approved or not, I do not know....

We have many Former (I don't like to use the expression,"Ex") Railroaders and they certainly know more from first hand experience which watches were approved and were not approved, esp. by the System they were employed by....

Thanks for your input....

Regards,

Jerry

I bought this on Flea bay and I actually bought it thinking it was a Waterbury, and by looking in Shugarts they all looked rather rare, and the case looked quite nice on this one as well, so even if it was not what I wanted a decent case would well have been worth the 20.00 or so I paid.
When I got it, I did become unsure of the make, hence I asked, but even worse was the back case had been cross threaded, and the crystal just fell out of the front bezel.
But to the sellers favor it was listed as a non working watch, in excellent condition ?????
Anyhow thanks for all the input all, and the movement is a nice looking 3 finger bridge. I have e-mailed the seller to see what she suggests, so time will tell I guess.
Thanks again,
Bill

Jerry anything after the start of WW2 or even if you use 1930 as a starting point was probably pretty much concrete since there is much better documentation. The real problem lies in the 1895-1930 range which is why I think there are a lot of watches that were probably used by the various railroads but there is little or no documentation. After 2 recessions and the start of the depression in the 20's the watch companies had reduced the number of grades for RR use. I doubt that there are many on here that started working for the RR in 1930 (18+70=88) and by the end of the war RR watch grades were extremely limited. Probably most of the RR'ers on this site probably started after the end of WW2 or later by then Elgin was down to the BWR 4XX & 5XX series, the Father Time or Veritas the FT454 ended in the 20's the Veritas 453 ended around the same time. So after the mid 20's all you had in the Elgin line was the BWR 47X and the BWR 5XX series. Hamilton might have had 2 watches after the mid-20's the 992 variants and the 950 variants, Hampden was nearly out of business, Waltham might have had 2-3 models for RR service. About the same time that Hampden was moving to Russia, Illinois was disappearing into Hamilton. If I am not mistaken Santa Fe revised it's standards up in 1921 but by then it was easy to do, the pickings were slim and the prices of RR approved watches sucked up a less percentage of the worker's pay.

[Administrative Note: Buster Beck had posted above this point but later removed his post.]

Buster you seem to be including "grandfathered" watches from companies that no longer existed. After 1930 if you wanted a new not recased, not grandfathered but a new model model offered by the existing watch companies. Let's look at who is left by 1930 Hampden was in Russia, South Bend was gone, Illinois had been gobbled up by Hamilton. So if my memory and my history is correct you had three watch companies left Elgin, Hamilton, and Waltham. Hamilton was offering the 950series, 952 series and the 992series and a few left over Illinois grades that were phased out during the 30's. Elgin you only had the BWR 21 and 23 jewel versions and later the 572 19j version. Waltham had more offerings in it's various "names" in the various jewel configurations of 19,21, and 23.
If you look prior to 1930 you had many RR approved offerings from South Bend, Hampden, and Illinois, and at whole bunch more offerings from Elgin in various numbered or name grades such as Father Time and Veritas to go along with the BWR name. Hamilton was always a bit spartan in it offereings so their line up did not change much. And while the watch companies were still making them up to around 1910-1915 your candy store choice could also include the 18 sizes to include all the name and numbered watches that were RR approved in the 19-23j version. If you worked for Santa Fe up to 1921 your watch could meet this criteria and be used, 17j,OF,DR,LS, adj3 pos along with a Breguet overcoil hairspring.
Now onto the topic of pay, lets go with the figure you used so in 1966 you quote $26.89/day. Even in the early 60's at most it would take a RR'er probably 1 week to pay for a watch depending on if he when with the low end or the high end but probably safe to say easily within two weeks pay. In 1917 a decent Elgin BWR 19/21j would run you close to $50 at a time when some people when some people considered $26.50 not per day but per week an extremely good paying job. So on a same type watch basis you could buy a nice 21j Hamilton for 2-3 days pay, at most one week in 1960's, for a guy buying the same 21j Hamilton the cost to him would be 2-3 weeks in the 1910-1920 time period. Sometime take the watches offered in the 1930 to 1960 range by the companies that still existed that were RR approved and then look at the number of watches offered by the various companies in the 1900-1930 range that would be considered RR approved. In the same range 30 years, you had at least double the watch companies and probably at least 5-15 times the number of watch choices even if you only used the min criteria 19j,LS,OF,DR,5 pos, Breguet hairspring, 16/18s even though some RR companies would have accepted less than that min up to 1921. That is why I said after 1930 the pickings were getting slim! Here is a bit of trivia for 1930. The average wage was less than $1.00/hr vs your average pay per hour of $3.35/hr, if you compare the cost of a 21j Hamilton RR watch in 1930 to what one cost in 1960 is certainly wasn't 3.35 times more.

Cost of Living 1930
How Much things cost in 1930
The Yearly Inflation Percentage USA ? UK - 2.8%
Average Cost of new house $7,145.00
Average wages per year $1,970.00
Cost of a gallon of Gas 10 cents
Average Cost for house rent $15.00 per month
A loaf of Bread 9 cents
A LB of Hamburger Meat 13 cents
Magic Chef Gas Cooker $195.00
Pontiac Big Six Car $745.00

[Administrative Note: Buster Beck had posted above this point but later removed his post.]

Buster, if you believe all RR updated every year then it should be easy to show the requirements for the top 20 or top 80 railroads easily from 1900 and later on some basis and that is my point RR standards in some print form in the early years are spotty at best because they were lost or destroyed. There were close to 200 Class one railroads, and then you can look at the class 2 railroads which were good size railroads some with hundreds of miles of track. Again you skirt the point I was trying to make, 60 or 90 day wonder doesn't matter, if you wanted to puchase a new pocket watch in the early 1900's the watch would absorb a greater percent of your pay than someone that purchased the same watch in 1960. Here is a calculator that shows costs over many different methods which are about close to being unbiased as possible. http://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/compare/

If I select a grade 270 16s, 21j LS movement only the price is $50 in the calculator that yields
$5,570.00 using the unskilled wage
$8,490.00 using the Production Worker compensation.

If we go to a later 1917 catalog and choose the 21J BWR the cost again is $50, 14 years later the end result of the calculator
$3,070.00 using the unskilled wage
$4,590.00 using the Production Worker

If you look at the Elgin site a full tilt BWR 21J with Montgomery dial is $60 in the 1939 Elgin sales book, and that yields.
$1,950.00 using the unskilled wage
$2,450.00 using the Production Worker Compensation

So if you look at the unskilled wage the high for a uncased movement in 1903 is over $5500. and by 1939 that impact dropped to $1950 for a fully cased watch, same brand, size and jewel count all the way though. Even if I allow for a BWR to cost $100 in 1955 the total impact would only be a touch over $1000 in 2009 dollars using the unskilled wage calculator.

My other point is that no matter there were many more RR watches models and sizes available from many more companies in the 1900-1930 than in 1930-1960 which I made the statement "slim pickings" since that seems to bother you, I correct myself and will use the politically correct term the RR watch selection was much more limited in regards to a "new" watch.

The comment about the RR standards as I said I can point out that they were much more varied than 17j adj 5 positions and that varition became less so in the 20's and even more so in the 30's as watch companies started failing and the RR grade watches models started becoming less and less varied, along with the fact the cost of the watch itself had less impact on the wallet as you got into 1930 and later.

As I stated Sante Fe would allow a 17j, DR, adj 3pos, LS with Breguet hairspring and you can find other RR companies that had comparable standards based on documentation from that era. I won't debate that some RR lines had requirements as stringent with a minimum of 19j,5 pos during the same period which is why I say you can't take one set of standards and apply them to all 200 railroad companies or even to the class 2 railroad companies.

As I mentioned there is absolutely no reason that an Elgin grade 342 16s 17j,LS,adj 4pos or an Elgin grade 412 18s, 21j,LS adj 3 pos could not have been used by a RR worked on any Santa Fe line or any line under the Santa Fe influence or any RR companies that had standards like Santa Fe.
Pointing to one list and saying this is a RR watch is simply not practical, one because many of the standards for the railroad companies that existed in the 1900-1930 time frame are not available or don't exist because they were lost long ago.