Rey - Rare Swiss Regulator Watch - Railroad Engraved - Circa 1940s

Before daylight a railroad platform has a silence of its own. The lamps are still burning, the rails hold the cold, and a train coming from far off arrives first as a shiver in the steel before it is ever a sound. The men who worked that hour lived by the minute, watches open under the lamps, because on a single track two trains kept apart by nothing but the time they agreed on.

A railroad man owned the watch here. His name, Howard Weinstein, is engraved in script across the steel back, with his Social Security number beneath it, and the number begins with 727, from the block the government issued only to railroad employees before 1963. The heavy inspected pocket watch of his trade stayed with the job, and this is the watch he wore as his own.

What he chose was a regulator, a name that belonged first to the master clocks every other clock was set against. Their faces kept the hours, the minutes, and the seconds each in its own place, so that no hand could be misread, and this watch wears the same divided dial: the hours in a small register under twelve, the minutes in a larger one at six, the seconds sweeping alone from the center over a track cut to fifths of a second. Very few wristwatches were ever made this way before 1987, and the early ones are considered rare today. The names collectors can put to them are Girard-Perregaux and Mimo, built on a movement made for only two years and known now from a single 1943 advertisement. Rey is a smaller name than either, and it has left so little behind that this watch is nearly the whole of its record.

Everything on this one agrees with that early date. The lugs are fixed wire, soldered to the case the way straps were mounted before spring bars came in after the war. The dial is lettered in the small French type of the wartime Swiss trade, Ancre at the left, 15 Rubis at the right, Swiss at the base. The import marks on the movement are cut by hand in flowing script, the way movements entering America were signed before a stamp took over the work. The early regulators that do surface are often rebuilt, their dials redone and their histories lost. This one is whole, its dial original, its owner still named on the back.

The dial has aged to a warm ivory, with fine specks across it and a deeper tone gathered at the outer edge, all of it in the photographs. Every hand is blued steel, thin and bright against the aged dial, the long seconds hand reaching all the way to the outer scale, and Rey is signed inside the hour register.

The movement is Swiss and winds by hand. It carries the marks American law required of an imported watch, Swiss, Fifteen 15 Jewels, Unadjusted, and the initials of its importer, M.L.G.C., cut on the bridge and repeated inside the back. The plates are finished in a bright radial grain, the ruby jewels showing red in their settings. One bridge is engraved Chronographe. The case has no pushers, so I show that engraving for what it is and make no chronograph claim. Winding is rough on this watch.  The watch run, and its service history is unknown.

The case has a domed acrylic crystal, and it shows scratches, pitting, and plating wear, with darkening around the bezel and lugs, all visible in the photographs. The back is stamped Fond Acier Inoxydable, stainless steel in French, and above the stamp Weinstein's script has softened with age, the name and the number still readable. On one side the time is kept in three places; on the other, the name of the man who kept it. It comes on a navy fabric strap, not original to the watch. 

Terms: Please review all photos carefully as they are a part of the listing. This is a vintage timepiece. Accuracy, power reserve, and water resistance are not guaranteed. Vintage watches may require periodic service. Performance can vary with wear, temperature, and position.

All sales final.