Steampunk Watch Has Locomotive DNA

Vintage trains and timepieces are icons of steampunk, and now a company in Connecticut has combined the two in a series of watches that incorporate elements of historic locomotives.

The Gauge Master series, with three models, features an outer ring made of metal stripped from 19th and 20th century engines at the Vapeur Val-de-Travers train museum in St-Sulpice, Switzerland.

The dials are inspired by gauges from an old German locomotive at the museum, with subdials modeled after valve wheels from the cab. The dials are askew, a feature that allows railroad engineers to see the time without moving their wrists.

The watches are powered by mechanical movements from Miyota, a Japanese manufacturer. It’s an automatic mechanism, so it doesn’t require manual winding. Instead, it relies on the wearer’s natural movements to wind the mechanism, but it also allows winding by hand.

Pramzius is offering the watches via a Kickstarter campaign that launched March 24 and runs through Friday, April 23. Backers can get the watches by pledging $399 or more, with delivery expected in June. The campaign met its US $6,877 fundraising goal on the first day.

This is the company’s fourth Kickstarter campaign for themed watches. The first, funded in 2017, was inspired by the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Next came a model with pieces from the Berlin Wall. Last year, Pramzius introduced the Iron Wolf, inspired by a medieval legend about the founding of Vilnius, Lithuania.

You can get a closer look at the Gauge Master series in the gallery below. See the Pramzius website and the Kickstarter page for more info.