"Sorry boys," he frowned, making a show of pulling out and consulting his old-fashioned railroad watch.
* * * * * * * * * *
"old-fashioned railroad watch"
In 1893, a set of standards for railroad timepieces was established across all railroad companies and zones. This was due to a spectacular crash in 1891 which was caused by one engineer's cheap watch being four minutes slow. But even before that, most railroads had some sort of standards for watches and keeping track of times and schedules. So my guess is that the Professor's railroad watch, being "old-fashioned," doesn't meet the brand new 1893 standards even though it met some other lower standards of some random railroad line.
My dad used to collect pocket watches and he made a big show whenever he found an old railroad watch. They all just looked the same to me and I was too bored to tears to retain the information from his lectures on what differentiated a railroad watch from a regular old pocket watch. I'm even bored now just recalling the subject!
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