The old saw about the regularity of a scheduled train is “you can set your watch by it.” When a train is ready to leave at 12:38, there is no “ish” attached to the time. At the Locomotive Engineer Graduation Ceremony at South Station on Tuesday, officials from the MBTA and the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad (MBCR) emphasized for the 10 ersatz Casey Joneses that their focus is to be “on time.”

“You will be delivering a quality, on-time service,” Stephen Urban, MBCR’s chief transportation officer, told the new locomotive engineers.

MBTA General Manager Daniel Grabauskus told the class of 2009 that people will be counting on them to get to and from work, school and shopping and “to get there on time.” He also took the time to praise the commuter rail’s efficiency, saying the system had “the best on-time performance records in the past 2-1/2 to 3 years.”

The irony in all this is that the scheduled 12:15 ceremony got underway 10 minutes late without any explanation. This is, after all, the T.

All the official talking heads appeared to be in place but there looked to be two empty seats in the front row where the grads were. At about 12:19, one newbie train jockey took his seat and at 12:24, the last one sat down. One minute later, the ceremony got underway.

We can only hope this isn’t a harbinger of things to come. And as a public service, we’d like to offer the new engineers a graduation gift. Set your watches here.