Chemin here..Hi I have just joined
 

Trying to work out where to post.Hi
I don’t know if you can help or point me in the right direction. I have a French Regulateur Der Chemins de Fer pocket watch circa 1890
I am trying to find someone who has knowledge of them and whether this one could have been issued to a Leeds railway employee.
If you have any ideas it would be great. :)

Hi there.

I'm fairly sure that no railway company in the UK would have issued a French railway watch to an employee.

But what do I know ?:)

Any exchanges of employees between UK & France around the turn of the century? I know certain engineers liked to travel abroad to gain experience & pick up new ideas (Gresley, Bulleid etc.) and Paris held major exhibitions (including 1889 & 1900) which may have been attended by railway companies from the UK.
I don't know if these might be possibilities.

Tony

A bit of a long shot, pardon the pun, but could it be associated with The Golden Arrow service;

The Golden Arrow (French: Flèche d’Or) was a luxury boat train of the Southern Railway and later British Railways. It linked London with Dover, where passengers took the ferry to Calais to join the Flèche d’Or of the Chemin de Fer du Nord and later SNCF which took them on to Paris.

Unless it was from Louis-François Cartier.
Stuart😉

Also, welcome to the forum Chemin, hope you enjoy the knowledge and information available here.

Or could it have been a GCR employee? As early as 1899 the Great Central Railway propsed the building of a tunnel under the Channel & linking it to the GCR all the way through to Nottingham, Sheffield & Manchester. Maybe some staff went to France to work with the French railway companies (pre-SNCF I think) on the tunnel project, even though it didn't come to fruition (until the 1980s/90s).

Tony

I think the GCR was built to the continental loading gauge.