Fresh from the showcase here at SwissWatchExpo.
I'm with Blake.
We're here to talk about the Railmaster part of the Seamaster line of Omega watches, which
is an interesting thing.
One of his favorite watches is the 57 Railmaster.
And I'm gonna let you talk about that a little bit.
Yeah, I really love this piece.
This is just a great everyday watch that I think can be worn.
There's no high polished finish on it or anything like this.
And this here, Railmaster 57 is an homage to one of the original watches.
A Omega made their anti magnetic up to 15,000 gauss model, which was a huge innovation at
the time, I believe one of the first two or three anti magnetic watches of that caliber
that's ever been produced.
Uh, which is interesting that they're now doing this homage piece because a has been
incorporating this technology into a lot of their other watches too.
A lot of the Seamaster and Aqua Terra line starting to come with anti magnetic capabilities
now.
And so this piece was one of the original ones that did it.
It's a really beautiful watch.
It has the sort of matte black finish, which actually has sort of like a Teakwood pin striping
finish on it.
The dial, the dial is really one of the most stunning pieces.
It looks like a matte finish at first, but then when the light catches it, I don't know
if you could see that you get so many tones of silver and gray in there and against the
a matte finish of the brown on the Luminous markers.
These markers are actually luminous, which is surprising because of this Brown color,
but really gives it a great vintage classic feel.
And what is a very modern production version of this watch.
So the individual markers are antique to look a little bit older.
The dial has that, uh, brushed satin finish.
And to my eyes, we were talking about this earlier.
It's a black dial and it does have a silver-ish gray look because it has sort of striations
in it.
But in my eyes because it has the anti-reflective coating on the crystal, it almost looks blue
at times, which is very interesting.
It's really a great looking watch.
And of course the rail master line and eventually the Aqua Terra line.
By the way, these, these two are, I'm not sure I would say they were sister and brother
per se, but they're pretty close.
The casings are very, very similar.
The water resistance value of them are very similar.
And the interesting thing about that rail master was in the 1850s, uh, this was a pocket
watch by Omega and Omega named that the Railmaster, because they were originally used for train
conductors to make sure that they were keeping on time, which is something we're going to
talk about here in just a second with the Chinese railroad piece.
So you've got another, uh, sorry, you got another piece that you like over here.
The white guy.
This is another similar line.
This one here is an Aqua Terra chronograph GMT.
And I just love this watch because if you're looking for a do it all dive watch, they can
literally take care of just about any function you could need.
It's great.
It's got the extra GMT time zone, it's got a chronograph movement and it's just an enormous
thick case here, housing all of these complications, which I just love.
Uh, it also has sort of the pinstripe, teakwood looking finish, which is emblematic of the
Aqua Terra line.
Uh, so many people mistake this for Planet Ocean because of the size, but this is actually
an Aqua Terra chronograph GMT, which I really love.
If you're looking for a great do it all sports watch, I think this is definitely a good candidate.
And really interestingly too, I think the most important thing about this watch is,
is that each one of the hour indicators is done in sort of a 3D effect that dial, the
depth of the dial inside the case versus the indicators on the dial versus as you said,
that Teakwood finish striation on the dial.
Everything comes together to give it a very textured feel.
It doesn't feel flat and monotone like so many white faced watches do - this one has
depth.
No matter how you look, look at it, no matter what angle you look at it.
I can see so much detail on this.
It does have the 24 hour outer bezel.
Um, it's designed again as he said, like the Seamaster Planet Ocean.
It's a very significant piece.
So the Railmaster, it's odd because you would on a Seamaster line.
Why is it Seamaster you know, it's, it's like you don't drive trains underwater.
So what do we need the Railmaster and Seamaster combined name for?
Well, the reality is is that the Seamaster line of watches was really just a whole conglomeration
of things.
That's why now we have the Aqua Terra as part of the Seamaster line too.
So it's sort of all just come us together.
It's sort of like Breitling - land, air and sea.
They have some watches in there and you go, wait a minute.
The Navitimer is the air watch, then we have the Superocean.
How does that combine with what's going on?
What the original Navitimer is the idea of flight.
Well, there's all kinds of things of exploration, that kind of thing.
And by the way, this has turned into sort of the same thing as Aqua Terra, whereas we
have a combination of Explorer, Submariner, that type of thing.
So it all comes together in the end.
Now two very important pieces, these enormous, uh, what looked like pocket watches on your
wrist.
And these are manual wind watches, but both of these have the crystal case back in them.
And I always struggle because they're on a strap to be able to show you what the inside
looks like.
Extraordinarily decorated.
Now the original idea behind why these are so large, people in the early days didn't,
men didn't wear wristwatches.
Ladies were the first ones to wear wrist watches.
A lot of people didn't realize that there were very, very tiny men struggled to get
out of the pocket watch age.
Yeah.
What wound up happening is out of pure necessity, they started putting the straps all in pocket
watches.
Pocket watches weren't always 56, 58 millimeters.
Sometimes they were 46 48 49 so they would weld little wires on the outside and then
put up leather strap on it and literally wear it on their wrist.
So I'm going to take my watch off here.
This is actually a 44 millimeter that I'm wearing.
So we're going to go to a 50 millimeter, which would be the size of a pocket watch.
And now you can see how clear that is and how huge that looks on my wrist.
And I have a, I wear a watch.
My wristband is between seven and a half and seven, three quarters.
So I consider to have a large wrist.
Imagine somebody who had a smaller risk that where something like a seven inch circumference
bracelet, right?
But no trouble written that, no trouble reading this dial whatsoever.
But that's right, because the lighting conditions and things like that made it hard to see the
dials.
And back then the luminosity, they didn't have the paint that glowed until much later.
So, um, that was something that they needed to be able to in low light conditions to read
very, very quickly.
And as a matter of fact, when you're a train conductor, I'm sure that happens more often
than not.
Sure it would be helpful.
So we do have the rail master and just the plain Seamaster version of this.
There are distinctions, but they look almost identical with the exception of the dials.
And there's another piece here at the Chinese railroad is a very interesting way.
Yeah.
In 1878, the Chinese decided that they were going to issue omegas to all train conductors
throughout China as their official timekeeping device.
And that's why this is the special edition Chinese railroad.
And it even has, uh, the map of China, the on the back of it engraved.
It's really cool.
Um, it also has a unique color of this orangy yellow significance colors, right?
Um, they still use Omega in the Chinese railroad today is their official watch.
In the early days, the Chinese railroad was a private division now as part of the government.
But during the switchover, when it became part of the government, they still managed
to keep the Omega as their time keeping device.
That's why it's an important piece in history.
When a lot of people look at this watch, they aren't really sure why this watch exists.
And by the way, it's a very limited number.
We have all of these watches and more here at SwissWatchExpo.
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We have a lot to tell you about Omegas! [inaudible].