In the United states, where railroads, trains and the people who ran them are so intricately linked to the country?s national history, the locomotive profession and the watches purpose-built for them have long been romanticized. This is a common trend among many other jobs, and the watches associated with them, from the past hundred years or so ? from scientists, sportsmen, divers, drivers, astronauts, actors, infantry, explorers, pilots, political leaders, and even polo players ? but few other pieces are so strongly connected to a national history as the American railroad watch.

However, just as the peak of American watchmaking has come and gone, so too have the railroad watches that marked its dawn during the twenty-five years or so before and after the turn of the 20th century. Among those rare brands carrying on this legacy, few are so frequently its champion as Lancaster-based RGM; a 1992-founded American watch manufacturer, named for the initials of its founder, trained horologist Roland G. Murphy, whose factory resides in the same historic area as the original Hamilton Watch Company, now headquartered in Switzerland.
Today we?ll be looking at RGM?s Model 222-RR, a modern converted-pocketwatch homage to the original Official RR Standard dial watches developed in 1925 (vintage ad above). The first of these original RR dial watches, then nicknamed Box Car dials, were first designed by Ball Watch Co. and served as the next evolution in railroad watch designs stemming f...