railway time
[railway n.]
A standard time adopted throughout a railway system to supersede local time for railway operations (in Great Britain, London time before the adoption of Greenwich Mean Time).
| 1847 Dickens Dombey (1848) xv. 155 There was even railway time observed in clocks, as if the sun itself had given in. 1851 London at Table i. 19 A private note,..has been sent out, naming eight, railway time, and at that hour to a minute the guests are seated. 1898 Murray's Handbk. India (ed. 3) p. xvi, Railway time throughout India is Madras time... Karachi time is 52 min. behind railway time... Allahabad [time is] 7 min. before railway time. 1959 Chambers's Encycl. XIII. 641/1 Till the end of the first half of the 19th century local time was largely used in Great Britain, but the development of railways caused a need for a common system of time-keeping throughout Great Britain, thus the use of ‘railway’ i.e. Greenwich time became fairly general. 1968 Guardian 17 Feb. 8/4 A 24-hour electric clock was built into a wall at Greenwich, and this master clock controlled, by ‘galvanism’, another clock at London Bridge station, and all the other stations followed London Bridge. Greenwich Mean Time, or Railway Time, as it was called, prevailed. 1975 Times 21 June 12/2 From 1840 Greenwich or ‘London’ time began to be used as ‘railway time’ throughout Great Britain. |