Ball Watch Engineer II watches

The Ball Engineer II is a line of steel watches with sapphire crystals from Ball Watch, a company whose history begins on the American railroads. Webb C. Ball founded it in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1891. On 19 April that year, two trains collided head-on at Kipton, Ohio, after a conductor's watch stopped for four minutes. Ball was made Chief Time Inspector and set the tests and standards for railroad watches: his RR Standard called for at least 17 jewels, lever setting and no more than 30 seconds' gain or loss a week. The company is now based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.

On the Engineer II Marvelight (NM2026C-S6J-GY), wide, flat tritium tubes form the hour markers, so they read like ordinary lumed indices and spread their light evenly in the dark. Tubes that size would have been too bulky and too heavy for the hands, which carry a different tube. The case is 40 mm wide and a little over 13 mm thick, with a magnifier over the date. The Engineer II Chronometer Red Label (NM2026C-SCJ-GY) has the same 40 mm by 13.15 mm dimensions, and the Pioneer (NM2026C-S4CAJ-BK) is slimmer at 12.15 mm in the same 40 mm width.

The Engineer II Magneto S (NM3022C-N1CJ-BK) is shielded against magnetism. At 42 mm, it has an iris on the caseback that closes over the movement to complete its magnetic shielding, worked by turning the coin-edge bezel; a small luminous window beside the crown shows whether the iris is shut. Its flat tritium tubes are much narrower than the Marvelight's, closer in width to the round tubes on its hands.

The Engineer Master II Diver Worldtime (DG2022A-PAJ-BK-T2) and Slide Chronograph (CM3888D-S1J-BK) belong to Ball's separate Engineer Master II collection. Both are 47.6 mm wide and 15.5 mm thick in steel, well above the 40 to 42 mm of the Engineer II models.