Hello,

this is my submission project for the "A Journey Through Time" Contest.
Part of it is a giant watch with opened cover. It is a steampunky watch and it is able to create a portal in itself.
The car is the DeLorean from "Back to the Future".
The story behind this map and the connection to "journey through time" is that Marty McFly and Doc Brown are on another journey in their time machine (which is the car). But this time they are actually driving through time itself which is symbolized by the huge clock.
Not only McFly and Brown are on a journey through time here. The watch itself also experiences an own journey through time as it slowly falls apart due to its age (god knows where this gigantic watch came from...). Also the portal has a strong suction and it will eventually suck in important parts for maintaining the portal opened. So in the end the portal will destroy the clock and close itself.
That is the unfortunate path through time the watch has to go. Hopefully McFly and Brown will have better perspectives.
If you ask yourself why all of this is situated in a desert this is no coincidence. In german language you can say "die Zeit verrieselt" ("time is trickling") which refers to the sand used in hourglasses. It trickels through a tiny hole and lets you see how much time has passed. So to add another symbol for passing time I decided to put the scene somewhere with sand.

I tried to mimic a real clockwork mechanism as much as possible. There is a steam piston which turns a gear which is connected over some other gears to the escapement gear. In older times a heavy mass pulled down a rope wound on a shaft to provide the torque used to turn the escapement wheel and eventually the watch hands. I thought a steampowered piston was much cooler than heavy masses.
The escapement consisting of an escapement wheel and an anchor which stops the escapement wheel for a short time, lets it turn very shortly and then stops it again. This anchor needs an extra power supply. There comes the balance wheel into play. It moves back and forth. The movement speed is geared down because the anchor only has to move a little bit.
Connected to the escapement wheel are gears for the watch hands.
There are clocks that let every full hour an artificial bird appear that makes a whistle sound. To imitate that a little bit I put a steam whistle on the clock's side.

I have a picture with all the gears listed that are built into the watch's casing. I was surprised myself how many gears I actually built in there. But they are all in there. It is only hard to tell because they fill almost the entire casing and there are four layers of gears. So they overlap a lot.

Enjoy!