The railroad pocket watch became a staple for all railway workers in the late 1800′s – but only by means of one of the greatest train wrecks.

The event occured on April 18, 1891, as two trains approached each other in Kipton, Ohio. On a passenger train, the pocket watch of an engineer stopped working for four minutes. As a result of this mixup the train was running late. Another train – a mail freighter – was heading in the same direction on another side of town. The trains missed their usual rendezvous point and wrecked near the edge of … Read the rest