One of the interesting niche areas of vintage Hamilton watches are the various time zone models from the 1950s. One set of models featured an image of North America and England with an hour hand that you could move to the time zone you were interested in... say Greenwich, or East Coast. These models are in the Transcontinental family, of which there are two members, the A and the B. They featured an automatic movement and could be considered part of the Automatic K-series, if it wasn't for the funky dial.
The other version is the Cross Country. Technically the only cataloged model is the Cross Country II, produced in 1956 and 1957. Although logic would dictate that there must be a Cross Country I, or just Cross Country.
The Cross Country II features an 18 jewel movement so that pretty much narrows down the options to the 8/0 sized 735 movement which was produced at that time. The case is 10K yellow gold filled with a stainless steel back. The dial consists of two parts, a silver butler finished outer ring that is attached to the movement and a rotating black disc with colored indices for five time zones... four in the US and one for Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
The Cross Country is identical in all aspects except for the movement inside.
My project watch is still a mystery to me, as I don't know what's inside yet. It's a little dirty but I can see the colorful dial with PMC and G showing for Pacific, Mountain, Central and Greenwich. I presume there's an E under the hour hand but the hand is blocking my view.
The case back has a very interesting presentation... Bon Voyage Scotty... I bet there's a good story behind that sentiment. It took some close observation but I finally found a lip by the Hamilton (near Bon) to use my case knife to pry the back away from the bezel.
The owner warned me that it wasn't running well so I figured I'd wind it and see what the time has to say. Normally I don't bother with this step but curiosity got the best of me. Based on the pattern, something is making some extra noise inside. Hopefully a good cleaning is all it needs.
The movement, etc., is retained in the case back once the bezel is lifted away.
I had a very difficult time lifting the movement out of the case back. Eventually I removed the second hand and minute hand and then removed the central hour wheel and hour hand. Now I can see the movement inside is an ETA movement, not the US made 735. So this is clearly a Cross Country and not the Cross Country II.
I carefully pried the dial and movement up out of the hole it was in to reveal a somewhat corroded case back. It's not bad but the movement was really stuck in there until I broke it loose. The inside of the case back identifies the model name - so there's no mystery to solve here.
The movement inside is an Illinois Watch Company branded movement. It doesn't have a Illinois model number, it's simply an ETA caliber, 1180, I believe. The TXD on the balance cock is the import code for Illinois.
Hamilton purchased Illinois Watch Company in 1928 and the Great Depression facilitated the demise of the brand as Hamilton absorbed what it could. It still owned the rights though and in the early 1950s Hamilton reintroduced the brand name as a way to test if the market would accept watches that used Swiss-made movements. The Illinois models gave way to Hamilton Illinois, and quickly just Hamilton after that. By 1955 the Illinois brand was dropped but Hamilton still had to use up their Illinois inventory.
The result was a lot of models that had a B after them... Cabot and Cabot B, Jason and Jason B, et al, where the first model had an Illinois movement and the latter had a Hamilton movement. They looked the same but the internal case setup might accommodate a different movement.
So why was the Cross Country not also a Cross Country B? I don't know for sure, but I suspect it has to do with the very different movement the Cross Country II received, being 18 jewels and all.
Anyway, all the parts get ultrasonically cleaned and dried before reassembly.
Piece by piece and part by part, it all goes back together. Once the balance jewels are back in place the movement comes back to life with a good motion. Let's see what the timer says now that the movement has been cleaned.
That's MUCH better. I'll leave it as is for now. It will probably settle down after a while.
Now to get the dial and hands back on... first the outer ring, then the hour wheel with the hour hand at 12:00.
The finished project turned out great. It's enjoying a prickly spot in the sunshine but is definitely ready for some more wrist time. I wonder what Scotty would say?
