CATCHY NAMES for use on Model Railroads.

[leighant]

I like names with meanings. The following may have TOO MANY meanings for some people.

My big dream layout (the one that may never get built) would include a big city scene with a coffee plant.

Interesting connection #1 (Model RR): There is a real life Maxwell House coffee plant in Houston located about 200 feet from the turntable of the former Houston Belt and Terminal engine terminal.

Interesting connection #2 (Model RR). The real life Maxwell House plant expanded and added on from a barely visible original building which resembled Walther's Brach's Candy Factory kit. (I don't know if I'll ever get to build the big dream railroad, but I have bought and reserved the kit and am saving roof details for a coffee plant.)

Interesting connection #3 (local industrial history) : the original building that looks like Brach's Candy Factory was an automobile assembly plant in the 1920s.

Interesting connection #4 (railroad names): There was a tea and a grocery chain (are they still around in some part of country?) called A & P, which was an abbreviation for The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company. One part of the Santa Fe Rwy, a predecessor road, was the Atlantic and Pacific RR, A&P. So a brand of tea and a railroad can have the same initials. How about my coffee company having same initials as railroad?
The subsidiary of Santa Fe in Texas was the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe. Taking that as a brand name for coffee...Gulf and Colorado Coffee. The rail line was actually named for the Colorado River of TEXAS but Colorado just doesn't sound like the kind of name you would associate with coffee.
However, we could use the G&C initials as Gulf & CARIBBEAN, and that sounds a little more like coffee. (It event has the word "BEAN" inside part of the name!)
And the G&C initials could be used in an ad slogan "G&C mean Good Coffee !

Use of the name.
I'm not sure I will ever get to build the big dream layout with the big city that has the coffee plant. But I have modeled a small East Texas town with a grocery store, and in the hand-painted butcher-paper ads put up in the window, I have an ad for "G&C coffee 89 cents". I got the transition era per-can price from a 1955 newspaper on microfilm at the local research library, hand-lettered a sign and reduced it on a copy machine (this was before everybody had a graphics computer and printer) to 1/4 inch tall. The little grocery store does not get carload rail shipments of any one product, but carloads of packaged G&C coffee pass through my modeled town enroute to the wholesale grocery warehouse at the other end of the line.

I am building a new railroad with a Gulf Coast island seaport.
(layout plan if you're interested:
http://www.railimages.com/albums/kennethanthony/ael.jpg )
(computer-eye's interpretation of scene:
http://www.railimages.com/albums/kennethanthony/adp.jpg )

I still won't model the coffee plant, but the port will receive an occasional cargo with several carloads of raw coffee beans to be shipped inland to the coffee plant.

So although I am not modeling this particular industry (yet) as far as a structure, I am modeling TRAFFIC as part of the operation and the "story" of my railroad.

[pastorbob]

I have Stench Chemical on the railroad, which is a big complex, has its own fleet of tank cars and covered hoppers.(STCX)

Bob

[Anonymous]

Milkem and Bilkem, attorneys at law

Sewem and Screwem, esq., tax advisors

Or, how about a sign I saw in southern France. Translated, it goes "We buy your old junk. We sell valuable antiques."

[MidlandPacific]

John Armstrong put a lot of plays on words into the towns in "Creative Layout Design." My favorite was always the town of Bee Haven, whose beauty queen could be christened "Miss Bee Haven."

[TrainFreak409]

Ohm's Law Firm

Voltan Amp's Electric Company

Bill Freeman's Bail Bonds

Universal Repairs "Bringing you down to Earth service."

P.C. Mac's Computer Repair

[ukguy]

Namron,

checkout this thread for plenty more.

http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=34133

Have fun,
Karl.

[cjcrescent]

Ott Dam (One of John Armstrongs favorites)

Miracle Chair-If its a good chair its a Miracle (Earl Smallshaw)

Gore and Daphetid, Akinback Mountains, the GD lines (gory & defeated-John Allen)

The trouble with "catchy" names is after a while they aren't so catchy. John Allen even stated that he wished he had changed the name of his RR before it was so well known, as he really got tired of the "catchy" after the battle name.

[jrbernier]

I M Cross

Sexhauer Feed & Seed(a real company in North Dakota)

Stockton Harbor Industrial Terminal

Jim

[Anonymous]

Let's start a list of Catchy Names to use on Model Railrods - such as :

WONDER SHOE COMPANY
"If it fits, it's a Wonder"

ABE ETTER CO.

JOE'S TOOL WORKS

"From Field to Table as Fast as we're able"

LOSTEN FOUNDRY

GOSHWATTA GORGE

SOSUMI & ISUYU

etc.

What are your Favorites ?