Layout Names

How about an on-topic thread for a change? If you're using a free-lanced name for your railroad, rather than following a prototype, how did you select your railroad's name? I wanted to find some reporting marks which held some sort of personal meaning for me. Trying to use my first name gave me railroad names such as Rock Island, California & Klamath. I couldn't invent anything that I liked with those initials. I realized that my zodiac sign had possibilities as reporting marks

- LEO. Eventually, after doodling around with a few possibilities, I settled on the Lake Erie & Oregon. Now I just need to come up with a final track plan for it.

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Reply to
Rick Jones
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RJ> How about an on-topic thread for a change? RJ> If you're using a free-lanced name for your railroad, rather than RJ> following a prototype, how did you select your railroad's name? RJ> I wanted to find some reporting marks which held some sort of RJ> personal meaning for me. Trying to use my first name gave me railroad RJ> names such as Rock Island, California & Klamath. I couldn't invent RJ> anything that I liked with those initials. RJ> I realized that my zodiac sign had possibilities as reporting marks RJ> - LEO. Eventually, after doodling around with a few possibilities, I RJ> settled on the Lake Erie & Oregon. Now I just need to come up with a RJ> final track plan for it.

I used the names of the 'eastmost' and 'westmost' stations: Library junction and Bench Station, with reporting marks LJBS.

My model is (going to be) suspended from ceiling (don't have the space to put it anyplace else). There are four main 'modules', from east to west they are:

Library Junction (over my library), Tub Yard (over my tub), Counterweight City (wrapped around the counterweight for my trapdoor) and Bench Station (over my work bench).

Visit:

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for more information on my layout.

RJ> RJ>

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RJ> -- RJ> RJ> Rick Jones RJ> Remove the Extra Dot to e-mail me RJ> RJ> "Of course the Soviet Union was bound to fall. It's all the way over on RJ> the edge of the map." RJ> -Kelly Bundy, "Married With Children" RJ> RJ>

\/ Robert Heller ||InterNet: snipped-for-privacy@cs.umass.edu

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Reply to
Robert Heller

My own freelanced line, Mill Hollow (reporting marks MLHL), is a New England Class I set in the contemporary era.

When I first began developing the line, I cast about for something suitable. Then I recalled the many summer vacations I spent at the home of friends of the family in Alstead, NH, a town not far from the Vermont border. The area was/is known as Mill Hollow, so I chose that for the railroad's name. (I later found out that there actually is a town by that name!)

Dieter Zakas

Reply to
Hzakas

The layout where I was indoctrinated into the ways of running a model railway was called the Wingrove Line. Wingrove was the main station and was named after the hero of a detective novel the owner read before WW2. Another station was Pine Bay, because it was built on pine board. A major junction station was Mason Street, because it was built on masonite. That's just a few of them.

Cheers David

Reply to
David Bromage

One of my favorite topics. I've spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what makes a good railroad name. My conclusion to date is three fold.

  1. If it has to be explained it isn't that good. I had seen pictures of John Allen's fantastic railroad for years and couldn't figure out how to pronounce it. Good railroad, bad name. I think he even came to that conclusion after it was too late to change it.
  2. It is not too good if people can never remember it or continually can't get it right (transposing, transpositioning, or stumbling over it). Obscure locations make a name sound like a short line. Does anyone (other than fans) remember what OW stands for?
  3. There is no single pattern to a good name. Number of words, syllables, cadence, emphasis doesn't seem to matter. "Good" railroad names seem to be the result of familiarity. When someone hears it enough in association with the railroad, it becomes "railroady".

I've written a pattern matching computer program that takes features people want in their railroad name and creates possible names for them. It will take parameters such as railroad type, country, region, and era. It will then ask for specific things like desired city names, initials, or special words. It takes all this information and produces an arbitrarily long list of names meeting the criteria. Each name on the list has a rating based on how close the produced name is to an existing "good" railroad name.

The problem is of course the limitations of the city name and railroad name database and the scores that I arbitrarily gave the "goodness" of each. I lost the data base a while back and have been trying to find time to rebuild it. Currently it only has city names from Colorado re-entered.

Reply to
SleuthRaptorman

Well, my club has used "East Coast Lines" since 1938, as we are a New England club near the coast. It's not the best name, but it's gotten us this far. A funnier story is a friend of mine at our club. His home road he named after his street, Tonawada St. Since he liked the NYC paint scheme, he called it the "Tonawanda Central" and used NYC paint schemes. Years later, he found out that there really was a Tonawanda Central near Buffalo, NY, and it became part of the New York Central. Spooky, eh? As for me, I model a prototype. Making up names is not a real issue for me. Finding the real names of places and buildings, now that's a challenge... :-)

Paul A. Cutler III

************* Weather Or No Go New Haven *************
Reply to
Pac Man

Well, my own line will be prototypical.

The best one I have come across recently was an article in "The Hot Box"

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The article was:

Planning and building the C&O (the Costly and Outrageous railroad) By NORM ION

Reply to
wannand

New York & Western..... Class 1 bridge route around NY City into New England. Owned by NYCentral. Never got further west of the Hudson River than about 15 miles.....

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Steve Lynch

Reply to
Steven Lynch

Check out

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Place names, churches, rivers, streams, etc lots of good stuff.

Jim

Reply to
Jim

To paraphrase from an out-of-print issue of Model Railroader on ideas for naming your railroad: Compile a list of cities, regions, geographic features, states, and revenue producers on your hypothetical railroad. Then try various combinations of them until you hit something that sounds good.

For example:

City, City & City: New York, New Haven & Hartford.

City & City: Louisville & Nashville.

Part Of A State: Illinois Central.

State & State: Maryland & Pennsylvania.

Region, City & State: Gulf, Mobile & Ohio.

City & Direction: Chicago & North Western.

City & State: Baltimore & Ohio.

State, State & State: Missouri-Kansas-Texas.

State, State & Region: Kansas Oklahoma, And Gulf.

State & Region: Delaware & Hudson (actually, this was named for a river & river).

City & Geographic Feature: Bessemer & Lake Erie.

City & Part Of State: Chicago & Eastern Illinois.

Region: Lehigh Valley.

City, City & Direction: Fort Dodge, Des Moines & Southern.

Part City Terminal: Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal.

State: Pennsylvania.

State Inhabitant: Virginian.

City, City & Revenue Source: Duluth, Miassabe & Iron Range.

Part Of A Region: Northern Pacific.

City, Geographic Feature, And Direction: Denver, Rio Grande & Western.

Reply to
Mark Mathu

Well, the complete story is on my web site:

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Choose the BARR History link from the menu on the left.

-- Joe Ellis ? CEO Bethlehem-Ares Railroad - A 1:160 Corp. ___a________n_mmm___mmm_mmm_mmm___mmm_mmm_mmm___mmm_n______ ___|8 8B| ___ /::::: / /::::X/ /:::::/ /:::::/|| ||__BARR| | | /::::::/ /:::::X /:::::/ /:::::/ ||

---------------------------------------------------------------- [(=)=(=)=(=)=(=)] |_________________________| [(=)=(=)=(=)=(=)] =============Serving America's Heartland Since 1825=============

Reply to
Joe Ellis

Well one could just go along with the current trend and name the railroad the YouPee, Saddam and Mid-Eastern. One part of the railroad has only right hand turnouts, another section has only left hand turnouts. Then there is a place called the Okie wye where both tracks lead to an interchange with the Baitemup & Frustratum. There are innovative toll tracks where fees are levied by the Trevithick Foundation on anything that resembles a locomotive or rolling stock for all of time. The railroad operates passenger cars made in China of prototypes from the USA, Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia and not one has the same couplers. Under the layout's only bridge at Opinion Gulch there are three trolls. When a train crosses the bridge one troll starts pissing, the other starts moaning and the third blasts your prize locomotive with a flame thrower. Operation is endlessly unresolved and assured to aggravate. Bruce

Reply to
Bruce Favinger

My current railroad is sort of a "protolance" layout. The "Milwaukee Northern" was actually an interurban line running north from Milwaukee prior to WW II. I've imagined it survived, extended North to Green Bay, South to Chicago, and dieselized sometime in the late 1940's. Parts still under wire were spun off to the "Cream City Traction" company (which is also the name of our local modular round robin traction club, "Cream City" is the nickname of Milwaukee).

Prior to this I operated the "Pacific Northern", a fictional line running up the pacific coast from Tijuana Mexico to Vancouver BC Canada. The name came about because I could easily letter rolling stock with commercial "Northern Pacific" decals.

Don

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Reply to
Trainman

Of course there's always Taggart Transcontinental! Lots of fun with tunnel fires!

Personally, I'm leaning toward Confederate Atlantic, complete with an upside down shield logo with crossed stars and bars. But I'm known for being faticious. (Sorry Jerry!)

Then there's my boss who has a G scale garden railroad named Granada Hills and Richmond, after his current and former home cities. For me that would be the Los Angeles & Los Angeles...not very good. I did live in Santa Cruz and Santa Monica in between. Hummmm.

The Los Angeles Live Steamers have a few cars labeled Smog Belt.

One of the famous modelers had one named Fiddletown and Copperopolis after two town in the gold country in California. I always liked that. Great name for a short line.

For now, it is more like the Living Room Floor and Christmas Tree Railroad. Let's see. LRFCTR. Might as well be LSMFT.

Or I could use my initials, DGW. How about Denver, Georgetown & Western or Dividend Guaranteed & Wrongdoing (sorry Jerry)!

But as my favorite real railroads were the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe, it will most likely end up being either Santa Fe Pacific or Southern Pacific Santa Fe with some merged version of the Warbonnet and Daylight color schemes.

Regards,

DAve

Reply to
DaveW

I call my advertising agency Bottom Line Marketing so my railroad "connects" three fictional towns and is called Botum, Lyne & Marqueting.

Carter

Reply to
Carter Braxton

In another context, I came across someone using the Bowdlerized expression "big forkin' deal". It struck me that Big Fork & Diehl (reporting mark BFD, of course) was an excellent name for a railroad, located in a mythical part of southern Indiana, near the mythical Big Fork of the Blue River.

The founder of the town and one of the initial railroad partners was Heinrich "Big Harry" Diehl. His grandson Sascha still practices law in Diehl. Another railroad founding partner was coal, wood and ice magnate Hermann Furzenloser ("If it smells like gas, you know it's Furzenloser"); Glenn's Engine House Tavern, for great uncle Glenn McNutt (a Wabash engineer); and on the edge of town the Holdyer-Hannon Mine #2 (for a favorite of the Tom Lehrer songs my wife and I discovered we both knew on the first day of our 40 day courtship, 25 1/2 years ago).

The BFD has major yard, engine servicing and NKP and WAB interchange/service trackage at Kenworthy (for maternal grandfather George, another Wabash engineer); George's Rule G Room (a bar in Kenworthy, for grandpa George); Hammond Metal Fabricators for family friend Bill Hammond, builder of the steel-hulled yacht Bluebird (see William Least Heat Moon's "Blue Highways"); Foster's Pawn for paternal grandpa Foster Nimrod Caple, a Nickel Plate conductor; and Mom's Cafe for his wife, grandma Mom Caple - buckwheat cakes special today.

The grocery stores in Diehl and Kenworthy are Piggly Wiggly, natch.

Some small businesses at Bradbury (for Ray), including Joe Kennier Chicken (poultry processors); and "Ach" Tober's Country Store & Gas Station.

At Lehrer (for Tom) the Buxom Melons farm (thanks to a great fruit crate graphic from Jeff Siladi); Carrara and Cross Dressed Stone; and Trimble's Farm Supply (for former neighbor, farmer Glenn Trimble). There's another melon farm southeast of Kenworthy, Hutter's Melons (he's a lapsed member of the Hutterite sect, an immigrant from Alberta, so it's pronounced "hooter").

Reply to
Steve Caple

Hmmm - the Linton, Indianapolis, Blue River and Austin comes to mind - the scaley track line.

Reply to
Steve Caple

That's not a reference to a Melvin hashmark, right?

Reply to
Steve Caple

ROTFALMAO!

Your posts are always assured to amuse! Good one, Bruce, and thanks for keeping your sense of humor!

All the best,

Mark.

Reply to
Mark Newton

I would suggest "The Big Ennis" railway.

Reply to
wannand

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