Station clock

Design

The design of station clocks in Europe was formerly quite diverse. Today, the majority of them are derived from the Swiss railway clock designed by Hans Hilfiker, a Swiss engineer, in 1944 when he was an employee of the Swiss Federal Railways. In 1953, Hilfiker added a red second hand to its design in the shape of a railway guard's signaling disc. The technical implementation of the railway clock, the central synchronization by a master clock, was engineered together with Mobatime, a clock manufacturer still producing the Swiss railway clock as well as the German railway clock besides many others.

Modern European station standard station clock designs have a white clock face that is illuminated in the dark, bar shaped black coloured marks or scales, but no numbers, at the periphery of the clock face dial, and bar-shaped hour and minute hands, also coloured black. The second hand on these standard designs is a thin bar, thickened or fitted with a disc at the peripheral end, and often coloured red. Such clock designs are easily legible from a distance.

Examples

File:Clock in Kings Cross.jpg|King's Cross, London File:Hamburg HBF Uhr 02 (RaBoe).jpg|Hamburg Hauptbahnhof File:Gare de Lyon xCRW 1311.jpg| Gare de Lyon, Paris File:2010-10-13-london-by-RalfR-046.jpg|Waterloo, London File:LindauBahnhof1.jpg|Round face, with curved pointers. File:Bürk Außenuhr.JPG|Square face, with straight edged pointers. File:LindauBahnhof3.jpg|Modern German station clock next to split-flap display board. File:Heidelberg Hbf Uhr.jpg|Customised design (Heidelberg Hbf) File:Bahnhofsuhr Aarau.jpg|Aarau station clock with a 9 m diameter

File:BahnhofsuhrZuerich RZ.jpg|Swiss railway clock, the "mother" of the modern railway clocks File:Stationsklok Antwerpen Centraal.jpg|Belgium File:Bahnhof Kinding (Altmühltal), Bahnsteiguhr 2007.jpg|Classic German DB station clock File:Den Haag Hollands spoor.JPG|Dutch NS station clock File:001971 - Madrid (4401560583).jpg|Spanish Renfe station clock

References

Notes

Bibliography

References

1. "Remarkable clocks and watches: the Swiss railway clock". Presence Switzerland, Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs FDFA.
2. (2013). "Die Bahnhofsuhr – Ein Mythos des Designs aus der Schweiz". Edition Hochparterre.
3. "Mobatime – Swiss Time Systems: References". MOSER-BAER SA.