What is/was a Timekeeper?

My late grandfather, in his early adulthood, was a timekeeper for a railroad in Connecticut; I wish I knew which one, but I don't. This was, I think, in the 1920's, and I believe he lost his job in the Depression, moved home to Maine and wound up marrying my grandmother. My question is, what is, or was, the role of a timekeeper? If I had to guess I would think it either has something to do with scheduling the trains, or it's related to payroll, but I'm not sure which; all he ever said was that he was a timekeeper and I never thought to ask him before he moved on. TIA.

Time keeper is a pre- payroll position, they log the time people worked from sign in and overtime sheets and forwarded them to payroll department.

There is another similar definition, I'm not sure if it's exactly the definition you are looking for, but I saw this show on
History Detectives where a particular clock owned by a jeweler in Chicago (J B Mayo) in the late 19th Century was perhaps wired
by telegraph wires and set "railroad standard time" for the Illinois Central in an era that all over the US, most cities still
depended on local time, in fact some cities were off by several or many minutes from each other, and the railroads, considering safety,
wanted to have their own "railroad" standard time to prevent accidents.
In this case, J B Mayo would get the time from the Dearborn Observatory (1870's era) and from his master clock in his pharmacy,
would use telegraph wires from his "regulator" clock to transmit the time to the IC, which would precisely govern their
railroad time all the way to New Orleans.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1579336059/
(it's just the first 16 minutes of that video, but an extremely fascinating and recommended video indeed...)

And a thread by skeptics also trying to say that this was not perhaps true, just that he synchronized pocket watches.

http://mb.nawcc.org/showthread.php?t=66006

Thanks very much, both of you. My gut feeling is that the workman-timesheet-prep role is what he was doing. While he could be handy around the house, there's no way he was a watchmaker!

frank754 wrote:There is another similar definition, I'm not sure if it's exactly the definition you are looking for, but I saw this show on
History Detectives where a particular clock owned by a jeweler in Chicago (J B Mayo) in the late 19th Century was perhaps wired
by telegraph wires and set "railroad standard time" for the Illinois Central in an era that all over the US, most cities still
depended on local time, in fact some cities were off by several or many minutes from each other, and the railroads, considering safety,
wanted to have their own "railroad" standard time to prevent accidents.
In this case, J B Mayo would get the time from the Dearborn Observatory (1870's era) and from his master clock in his pharmacy,
would use telegraph wires from his "regulator" clock to transmit the time to the IC, which would precisely govern their
railroad time all the way to New Orleans.

http://video.pbs.org/video/1579336059/
(it's just the first 16 minutes of that video, but an extremely fascinating and recommended video indeed...)

And a thread by skeptics also trying to say that this was not perhaps true, just that he synchronized pocket watches.

http://mb.nawcc.org/showthread.php?t=66006

Great video. Learn something new everyday. Thanks!

Not really sure, but if the old boy was working in the early 1900's, they could have very well had a "timekeeper" position/craft whose duties involved keeping track, recording actual time or coordinating time across the railroad. I think 1950's era "timekeeper"s were more payroll related. The old 1900's railroad was extensively craft/position specific.

10more years wrote:Not really sure, but if the old boy was working in the early 1900's, they could have very well had a "timekeeper" position/craft whose duties involved keeping track, recording actual time or coordinating time across the railroad. I think 1950's era "timekeeper"s were more payroll related. The old 1900's railroad was extensively craft/position specific.

Clerks took care of a lot of a local district's time--mostly trainmen and engineers on NS/Southern. May have been different in other Divisions, etc. This was called "Crew Clerk", and the person protecting this job also took care of the "Crew Book" which showed what assignments a trainman was holding at the time, if he was an "Extra board" guy. You had to have a pretty good idea of the trainman's seniority because people were all the time trying to "trick" the Crew Clerk into letting them claim out on an assignment they didn't stand for or get paid for shifts they didn't work. The *other*
trainman that stood for the work would then "time claim" the illegal claimant for the days pay. Guess who got blamed! The clerk! It would get the clerk "whammy" time (pounding sand); one made sure to keep his run-off insurance up to date!!!! The clerk also worked as "Crew Caller" at times or worked closely with the call boy who called crews to work from the motel or dormitory. Charlotte, NC had a crew dormitory (not now used) and a full-time elderly couple (matron) to take care of it.
When I worked, the time sheets were still being done manually, but it was just at the verge of being typed into a computer. I had the "privilege"(?) of doing most of those jobs. Never got run off over THAT, tho! I had a pretty good (old school) trainmaster who kinda looked after us clerks and kept us from making boo boos with the time sheets. He knew them almost by heart, and he helped me "catch" several trainmen trying to make illegal moves with the timesheet with the resulting scolding accruing to THEM, not me!

GF

We had "crew clerks" at Rocky Mount , too. In fact, their were two different position: one for engineers and one for trainmen. They kept physical paper ledger records of every seniority move, call, mark up, mark off, mileage, almost everything was recorded in a large book. But, we had a another clerk position that was called a "timekeeper" who dealt with payroll (I think). That was a long time ago for me.

Come to think of it, it WAS just trainmen's crew sheet on NS. I never had to fool with engineers an don't even remember how that was handled. But I DID handle the trainmen's time sheets. Sweatin' all the time for fear of getting run off over it!

GF