Since 1986, Swiss Mondaine has been producing wristwatch versions of the distinctive clock face design that you can find represented in each SBB (state railway) station in Switzerland. These “Swiss railways” watches are easily the most popular product produced by Mondaine, and the global popularity of these Bauhaus-style timepieces has made Mondaine a serious force to be reckoned with. Now, the group includes the Mondaine brand, as well as Luminox. Today, I want to look at a brand-new wall clock released by Mondaine, along with two of its more recent SBB Swiss Railways wristwatches in the brand’s “Classic Collection.” The clock is the bigger story because it brings the look and feel of the railway station into your home or office.
While I know that most people don’t want to think of a railway station in their home or office, Switzerland’s train stations are a different story. Not only are they clean and safe, but Swiss trains also have a deserved reputation for being among the most reliable and on-time in the world. This means that, to Swiss people, and those who have relied on trains in the country, memories of being in the train stations are actually very positive. As someone who has spent a fair amount of time on Swiss trains, I entirely agree. There is an interesting piece of functionality that one can only really observe from these clocks in the train stations themselves. This is known as the “Stop2Go” functionality, and what it does is keep the seconds hand at the 60-minute marker for two seconds, prior to it continuing its sweeping travel. Why is this?
Recall that, unlike most quartz watches with ticking seconds hands, many clocks have smooth-moving sweeping seconds hands. This means that if you want to know precisely when it is the right minute, you more or less need to approximate since the motion of the seconds hand is a moving target. The solution was to hold the seconds hand at the top of the minute (which then allows the minute hand to fully advance to its next stop), so that train operators who want to leave at the exact minute can do so. Mondaine wristwatches did not replicate this function until 2013 with the original release of the Modaine Stop2Go watch. aBlogtoWatch went hands-on with the Stop2Go wristwatch here. At the time of writing, there are no current Stop2Go watches in production, but Mondaine has said that a new Stop2Go watch was entering production soon so by 2023 or so there will be new ones on the market. For now, Mondaine has released a wall clock with the Stop2Go functionality. It is powered by two AA batteries and also features a WiFi connectivity function to set it. This is very interesting because it doesn’t require a smartphone app. Instead, your phone or computer directly connects to the Mondaine clock in order to set the time. I thought that was pretty cool.
The clock has a brushed aluminum metal case and is 25 centimeters in diameter. That makes it medium in size, and it can be mounted on a nail or other wall hanger. While it doesn’t come with a base to sit on, I think it would also be interesting to have this on a bookshelf or desk since the size of the Mondaine Stop2Go WiFi Wall Clock lends itself well to on or off-wall use in my opinion. Right now Mondaine offers just one version of the clock with the traditional white dial being the reference MSM.25S11. While the product is simple, that is actually what I most like about it. The clock replicates the functionality of the actual Swiss Railways clocks and also features a way to set it for perfect accuracy. It does that without needing hard-to-find batteries or requiring special software. The clock isn’t priced as a bargain, but it also isn’t nearly as expensive as other less functional wall clocks on the market. Given the appeal of this Bauhaus design and the easy accessibility of this Stop2Go WiFi Wall Clock, I think Mondaine has a hit with this product, which has a retail price of $365 USD.
Given that aBlogtoWatch normally covers wristwatches and not wall clocks, I’ve included two of the more recent Mondaine Swiss Railways watches here from the Classic Collection. These are both 40mm-wide cases but most, if not all, of the Classic Collection watches from Mondaine are also produced in a 36mm wide size variant. Over the dials is a mineral crystal and the cases are water-resistant to 30 meters. The watches are also sold either on the pictured mesh metal bracelets, or with leather straps that match the color accents on the dial.
What Mondaine has done very well over the years is create fashion-forward watches based on the original SBB station clocks, but that play with different colors, materials, and finishing. These two models play with brushed steel, one in natural steel tone, and the other with a yellow-gold tone applied to brushed steel. Mondaine produces these watches with gray, green, and blue dials, in addition to the classic white dial design, of course. Unlike the white dial models, these colorful versions don’t have black hands and hour markers, but those that match the case color. The prominent and immutable lollypop red seconds hand never changes of course. Inside the watches is a Swiss Made Ronda caliber 513 quartz movement. Price for these watches is a bit less than the cost of the above-mentioned Stop2Go WiFi clock — $320 USD for the Mondaine Classic reference A660.30360.40SBJ in steel with the blue dial, and $335 USD for the Mondaine Classic A660.30360.60SBM in gold tone with the forest green dial. Learn more at the Mondaine website here.
