I was going to name mine PennCentral but suddenly my bank accounts all emptied and all the other railroad modelers giggled and snickered behind my back. I wonder why that would be?
Seriously, my last layout was called the Plywood Atlantic as it was two sheets in an L shape and 100% snap track.
Mine is the Grey Mountain and Dalton RR.
My first layout used hardshell scenery as popularized in MR in the early 60's; I tinted the plaster so the mountains had a light gray base color which prompted the first part of the name. However when abbreviated as the GM RR, the name seemed to lack an ending.
So... GM&A? - naw. GM&B?, nope.... GM&D had a nice ring to it. Since the setting for the layout was in NE PA, I looked on a map for a city starting with D, and found Dalton.
"Grey" is spelled with an "e" because I was using rub-on lettering sheets that only had two A's per alphabet.
And that's been the name for 46 years and counting.
Jim
When I was planning a free lanced class I, it was going to be the Virginia and Lake Erie. But now I'm doing the Maryland and Pennsylvania (Ma&Pa) and that's what I plan to call it.
Enjoy
Paul
One tip.
Avoid any "cutsie" name. The novelty soon wears off.
Cheers
Roger T.
Home of the late Great Eastern Railway see: - http://www.greateasternrailway.com
For more photos of the late GER see: - http://s94.photobucket.com/albums/l99/rogertra/Great_Eastern/
Phil, I'm not a rocket scientist; they are my students.
In Westcentral Pennsylvania, Johnstown city limits, are shaped like a dog, surrounds the Conemaugh Valley where two rivers meet to form the Conemaugh River, to run through the steep-hilled Conemaugh Gap, eventually emptying into the Allegheny River into Pittsburgh.
The former west slope 4-track Pennsy mainline (now 3-track Norfolk Southern) follows the rivers through Johnstown and then the Conemaugh Gap before cutting over to Pittsbugh and beyond.
Interurban => What if the Brill/PCC traction was expanded to include local freight?
Class I => What if PRR electrification westward expansion was planned from Harrisburg?
Conemaugh Road & Traction:
"Conemaugh" for geography.
"Road" for newer small diesel.
"Traction" for CR&T's origins.
Conemaugh Road & Traction circa 1956
My Golden State Railroad is a fictional bridge road that runs from San Jose California east throught the San Juaquin Valley and then up the spine of the Sierra Nevada Mountians thru Klamath Falls to Medford Oregon. All six of the class 1 railroads have to connect thru us to move traffic in all directions thru northern California. We also have the City Of San Francisco, The Daylight and the California Zephyer passenger trains running on our tracks.
Modeling the fictional B&M Dowe, NH branch in the early 50's.
My regional-link railroad was founded in 1972 as simply the "Pine Ridge Railroad". It was formalized in 1973 as a High School English short story project as the "Pine Ridge and North River". It is set at the height of the uranium mining craze of the 1950s and is in the same part of the country as Adelie's "Bunter Ridge Southwestern Railroad". It connects to the Santa Fe & C&S in Trinidad and the Rio Grande in Walsenburg. It services several major coal mines but its primary customer is a uranium mine in Northern NM. At the time I was into the cutsy name and it had a direct competitor which was the Emersion & Lake Palmer.
It took years planning the geology, geography, and towns of the ficticious area. Once the "area" is designed the elements become part of the railroad name just like they do in real life.
Since that time I've learned a lot more and worked on a railroad further north. It assumes that Westinghouse fulfilled their committement to Tesla and his wireless power distribution system was developed. The railroad is therefore a shortline/industrial railway mainly serving the Tesla Wireless Power company near Colorado Springs. Pikes Peak Fossil Creek & Tesla.
At one time I wrote a computer program to generate railroad names. It was programmed with "Colorado" and came up with some really good ones. Unfortunately I don't need that many. So I only kept the Kremling & Roostic Uray as my narrow gauge.
Here are some other threads related to this topic. Once again I really wish we could merge these things into a more comprehensive and easily findable thread:http://cs.trains.com/forums/1/670786/ShowPost.aspx#670786http://cs.trains.com/forums/1/792540/ShowPost.aspx#792540http://cs.trains.com/forums/1/826283/ShowPost.aspx#826283
Back shortly after I started in model railroading, I chose a name for my railroad. Since I hadn't chosen a region for my railroad to exist (still haven't) I kept it ambiguous enough that it could have been found anywhere. A name like Samson, Burnton, and Southern (not Burlington) didn't use the name of any major cities or even regions, so I'm not restricted to region by the name. For paint scheme, I loosely followed the Reading Railroad (growing up it was my hometown railroad), but used a lighter green. I even copied the large numbers at the back of the long hood.
my05hammer wrote: The name of my railroad is "Grain Belt". It was going to be "Anchor Valley Central", but I wanted a name that sounded rural. Then come to find out that there really IS a "Grainbelt RR". But it is spelled as one word and mine is two words. The main town is still Anchor Valley, and there will be three other towns on the layout (construction starts after the Christmas Holidays), one at each end of the route that are named Bedford Falls and Rock river, and one small township called Emerald.
The name of my railroad is "Grain Belt". It was going to be "Anchor Valley Central", but I wanted a name that sounded rural.
Then come to find out that there really IS a "Grainbelt RR". But it is spelled as one word and mine is two words.
The main town is still Anchor Valley, and there will be three other towns on the layout (construction starts after the Christmas Holidays), one at each end of the route that are named Bedford Falls and Rock river, and one small township called Emerald.
Well you would have a head start on designing a herald for your railroad by borrowing one from Grain Belt Beer. This is from www.grainbelt.com:
From the far, far reaches of the wild, wild west I am: rtpoteet
Joliet, Urbana, Nashville and Kokomo
The JUNK line!
I was going to name my dream layout the Joint Line RR; however, since there are several prototype double track mainlines I decided on the Denver Pueblo & Southern, Joint Line Division. The reason is that I am modeling the double track main between Denver and Pueblo known locally as the Joint Line.
Roger Michels modeling the Joint Line in HO set in November 1953.
Just finished Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged'. I didn't know that a railroad played such a major part of the story.
I think I'll name my road the Taggart Transcontinental.
Bruce J.
Roy Onward into the fog http://s1014.photobucket.com/albums/af269/looseclu/
Interiors and people figures make such a difference. Especially the people.
My Yuba River Sub is a subdivision of a fictional D&RGW line from Salt Lake City to Oakland that crosses the Sierra Nevada midway between SP's Donner Pass line and WP's Feather River Route. It represents the mountainous portion of the route, running between Nevada City, CA (el. 3000') across Yuba Summit (el. 6770') to Sierraville, CA (el.4880') where it becomes the Carson Subdivision east to Carson City. It follows the watershed of the Yuba River.
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
Let's see, the village Railroad Flat (east/central CA) and Railroad Pass (west/central NV) never had railroads....But back to the topic.
Saw a street sign saying "No Name Street" (was that in Marin or Sonoma counties, CA?).
Isn't there a Just Another Creek (or something) in Alaska?
I suppose No Name Railroad or Just Another Railroad would be bad marketing. Nevertheless, I can picture an interesting herald design for JAR.
Mark
Gryphon wrote:... One night while discussing the different road names I came out with Rio Pacific the merger of DGR&W with SP. We like our intials RPR aka Reaper.....
Rio Pacific...peaceful river. Now could you design a more suitable herald or create a better saying? Using the Reaper would drive your customers, particularly passengers, away.
My pike is freelanced, but based on the Seattle and North Coast Rairoad which was a briefly lived shortline spun off of the Milwaukee Road's 14th Sub on Washington's Olympic Peninsula.
Early in the last century, prior to being bought up by the Milwaukee, this little road was called (among other things) the Port Angeles and Eastern Railroad. I liked the intials of the road and wanted to keep them (or as close to them as possible). However, as I was planning a freelanced pike, I didn't want to used real place names. I've always like puns and words with double meanings, so I changed Port Angeles to Port Able.
Port Able... Portable, get it! (And no, it isn't portable! LOL)
Anyhow, that is how the name Port Able and Eastern Railroad came to be. And that is how I came up with my screen name of PA&ERR.
However, after living with it for a while, I figured I preferred "Pacific" to "Eastern" and so I changed the name slightly to reflect this fact. Thus, the Port Able and Eastern became the Port Able and Pacific - and that is the way my pike is registered with the NMRAs Pike Registry.
Alas, my screen name was already (apparently) set in stone and thus it remains to this day.
So, although my screen name is PA&ERR, my pike is the Port Able and Pacific Railroad.
-George
"And the sons of Pullman porters and the sons of engineers ride their father's magic carpet made of steel..."
markpierce wrote: Saw a street sign saying "No Name Street" (was that in Marin or Sonoma counties, CA?).Mark
In Pleasantville, NY they have a "New Street" and last time I drove by it was being repaved. Just how new was it? Nobody I know in P'ville remembers it not being there.(It is along side the Metro North tracks)
Raised on the Erie Lackawanna Mainline- Supt. of the Black River Transfer & Terminal R.R.
I opted for a webname that has nothing to do with trains, as the layouts continually change. I;ve narrowed down to two ideas though, the one I'm currently setting to build is a Mountain Line out west called Half Moon Orion & Northern.
It's mostly mainlines serving small railroad towns along the way that grew up on the line and can;t easily reach the outlining World. Other major buisness includes hauling Import loads from off the California Coast to their destination with interchange at other lines al;on the way to the o ther side of the Rockies, and empties/exports heading back the same way to get reloaded. The name was chosen for the Initials HO&N, the two scales Dad and I really like. It also lends itself to a nice catchphrase, HONest, HON time. The lkine will be built to be general enough though to sub in for mountainous places as we see fit. I, a day to run C&O through the Alleghanies.
Half Moon was a Seaplane Base Dad had made when I was in Thomas wooden scale, and Orion was the name of a Space Station we built out of those Rokenback(I know that's mmisspelled, but close enough) snap cubes. It was a double wheel, two round disks joined in the center by a primary commerse area and shuttle docking. There was also docking outside the rings for larger shuttles in the future. On the Railroad, Haldf Moon became one of the primary crew change points located on a river with a Harbor that would become, you guessed it, a Seaplane base in the modern rendition. Space prevented me from modelling it, But Orion would become a Large city near where the Northbound Main leaves the East-West throughway. Due to topography, the line feeding up from the South has to hit the East West and jog over to continue North. Cities Like Orion and an as yet unnamed sister city on the Southbounder have largeish yards to resort trains changing directions.
Other place names would include fictional places Dad and I made stories of.
-Morgan
Since it is a take off on the Clinchfield, the name Clinch Valley seemed to fit.
Larry
http://www.youtube.com/user/ClinchValleySD40
http://www.flickr.com/photos/52481330@N05/
http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/showgallery.php/cat/500/page/1/ppuser/8745/sl/c