"cleaned his clock" Antedating to 1946

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

    The material sent by Sam Clements and Doug Wilson is very interesting.
  Re: the 1929 example below, why would bringing a train to a sudden stop by setting the air brakes be described in railroad lingo as "clean the clock"
or "wipe the gauge"?  What exactly is going on here?

Gerald Cohen
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> From:         American Dialect Society on behalf of douglas at NB.NET
> Sent:         Saturday, February 11, 2006 3:08 PM
>
> From N'archive:
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> _Reno Evening Gazette_, 18 Sep. 1942: p. 12: <<"Who knows?" Lobert said yesterday, eager for the Brooklyn game. "Maybe we'll clean their clocks.">>
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> _Cook County Herald_, 6 May 1930: p. 1:
>
> [Tomatoes versus citrus fruits]
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> <<But the science boys now say that the vitamines in the tomato can clean
> the clock of any of the others so highly recommended and not half tried.>>
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> _Trenton Evening Times_, 28 July 1908: p. 11:
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> <<It took the Thistles just one inning to clean the clocks of the Times boys.>>
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> And from ProQuest: a different usage, but MAYBE ancestral ("clean the clock" = "halt abruptly" or so):
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> _The Bookman_ 69(5), July 1929: p. 524:
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> Grover Jones, "Railroad Lingo":
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> <<Should the engineer "wipe the gauge" or "clean the clock", it means that he has brought the train to a sudden stop by setting the air brakes.>>
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> Bunch of other railroad lingo in this last piece.
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>

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