Your Watch and Gun, Driver

I wasn't going to inflict another timepiece blip upon you just yet but the weather took a hand. Outside it is HOSING down and so I ain't going no place. We needed the rain as always but, fair dinkum, a little moderation might have been nice. Now I could have blipped some nice shiny water droplets clinging to delicious bits of wire but at last count there have been approximately 309 such blips posted this month alone. Nah.

Instead I thought I'd make a start showing you the pocket watch collection. Now this watch has no personal or family provenance that I know of but it is a genuine Waltham manufactured New South Wales Government Railways issue pocket watch.

Certain and precise details are hard to find but (largely in response to the activities of Americans, Messrs Jessie and Frank James it seems) from the late 1880s N.S.W.G.R. locomotive drivers began to be issued with reliable watches and hand guns - bearing matching serial numbers. Almost from the beginning the watch supplier was the Waltham Watch Company of America but given that Waltham got out of personal watch making in 1949, later issues (until about 1972) were supplied by Omega.

When the guns stopped being issued is not certain but one report suggests that was shortly before World War 2. Going by the serial number stamped on the back of the case and the design of the dial, we think this piece may have originally  been issued sometime between about 1945 and perhaps 1955. I have just given it a major cleaning, it's  in pretty respectable condition and works perfectly. The second hand may look slightly fuzzy because it was running as the capture was being made.