ATO French railway clock

Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2011 10:32 pm     Post subject: ATO French railway clock

Hi all,

I recently bought a nice clock. It is branded ATO and I was told it was a French railway station platform clock from the 1960s.

It has an impulse-driven movement and I can't work out how to get it running. I was wondering if anyone might be able to help me...

The movement had four wires coming out of it - two black wires were labelled 240v and the other two wires are thin, so I assumed they are low-voltage feeds of some description.

When you put 240v (I am in the UK) across the black wires, it runs a motor in the movement. The motor drives a cam, which activates and de-activated a microswitch every 35 seconds.

If you put a 1.5v / 9v / whatever household battery across the two thin wires, the minute hand advances a 1/2 minute increment. If you then flip the battery to the opposite polarity, the minute hand advances another 1/2 minute step.

The minute hand can activate and de-activate the motor, although I can't work out the time / number of polarity flip-flops required to make it do this.

I'm completely baffled. I'd love to get this working on it's impulse movement, but am close to pulling it out and replacing with a quartz movement. Before I do this, I thought I should ask for help!

Does anyone have any ideas? Help from an expert would be greatly appreciated.







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Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2011 12:14 pm     Post subject:

i'm going to point you in the right direction by giving you a website full of people with time and skills to help you.

http://mb.nawcc.org/forumdisplay.php?f=3

Just register and post the question in the APPROPRIATE forum, not just any forum section or it will get moved.

Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2011 6:40 pm     Post subject:

I am thinking this could be a slave clock, that was regulated by a master clock in the station to keep the same time. Commonly used in schools.

Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 11:37 pm     Post subject:



Done - thanks for the tip.