What watch do you wear?

Dddrees said:
That's the approximate time period I've heard as well.
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I wouldn't go that long if you want the watch to last for generations. The cleanliness and distribution of lubricant is as important as the lubricant itself. Also if a dive watch, I not wait that long between gaskets and pressure tests.
 
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Osprey on weathered drunkart canvas

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today I'm wearing my new Seiko SRP 773 on my Italian rubber nato strap.

normally I rock a Breitling Colt 44 on a diver strap
 
The most legible watch I own. At 50 years old it's one of the last of the Railroad Approved wristwatches. A Webb C. Ball Official RR Standard Trainmaster with an A. Schild chronometer.

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leghog said:
The most legible watch I own. At 50 years old it's one of the last of the Railroad Approved wristwatches. A Webb C. Ball Official RR Standard Trainmaster with an A. Schild chronometer.
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Thanks for the photos, Leg. I hadn't seen a Ball Trainmaster. Very few mechanical wristwatches claim to meet the old railroad accuracy standard: Ball, Omega Railmaster, Hamilton Railroad are the ones I've heard of. But Seiko, Citizen and Pulsar still make cheap Railroad Approved quartz wristwatches. This is mine:

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Nowadays railroads use GPS and satellite timekeeping to keep their trains from running into one another: most do not require an approved watch anymore, and rail workers wear G-Shocks or whatever. But a few still require a Railroad Approved watch, and that is what the Seikos, Citizens and Pulsars are for. It may be a railroad you've never heard of in Kenya or Malaysia, but my watch is on some railroad's approved list.

Back in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a Railroad Approved watch had to be accurate +/– 30 seconds per week. (Any quartz watch should meet that standard per month.) The second hand had to "hack" (settable). The movement had to be easy for the railroad's watchmakers to regulate. Everyone set their watch to a designated railroad clock, and all watches were time tested and regulated at regular intervals. If your watch didn't pass, you bought a new one from the railroad's approved list. That was how they did it back in the day.

Until the early 1960s, Railroad Approved watches were pocket watches. In the 1930s and '40s, the Luftwaffe specified railroad approved watch movements to save money: they were designed for +50mm pocket watches, and that is why the German B-Uhrs (air crewman's watches) were so huge.

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