Who operates their own roadname?

[trainfreek92]

Me???? My Railroad is the "Maple Leaf and Pine Tree Central RR or the ML&PTC RR" I model Northern New England. At this stage in my life thats just the name of the layout (im 13) So i run trains from the Maine Central, Boston&Maine, Guilford,CSX,Green Mountain, Bangor & Arostook,Rutland. CV, CP, CN. When I am a adult i might buy a airbrush make my own decals and paint locos MAYBE!! Tim

[tomikawaTT]

My forum moniker is my freelance road name, foreshortened. Full length, it's the Tomikawa Tani Tetsudo (Richstream Valley Railroad), and rolling stock and facilities are entirely 'imagineered' within a rural Japan setting.

There is also the Kashimoto Forest Railway, based on the prototype Kiso Forest Railway but running under my wife's maiden name to preserve peace in the family.

Nowadays, both are playing backup to the main star, the (wholly prototype, with fictional station names) Japan National Railways.

Many years ago I wrote a long essay on the fictional history of the railroads and the area they serve. Now, finally, I'm building some of it.

[ericmanke]

I have two protofreelance railroads. One in N, one in HO. I'm currently working on the one in N right now. THe un-named as of now road purchased the ex Northern Pacific branch from Superior to Ashland WI, and also has purchased a small cluster of Ex-CNW lines in Northeast Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. I was going to use the name Wisconsin Northern, but Progressive Rail beat me to it. Also thought about Superior Southern. It is set in 1983, and operates with 5 Ex N&W GP18s, a leased BN GP9, and an Ex-Chessie System GP7. We haul woodchips, pulpwood, ballast, some paper, food products, a little lumber, some flour, and manufactured goods. As a child of the 80's roads like Wisconsin Central, Fox River Valley, Iowa Interstate, and Chicago Central etc have always fasinated me. Especially hodgepodged first and early second generation power still in their former owners colors with their markings painted out. Catt, where is the road that you interchange in Wisconsin? I'm looking for a friendly connection to the south.

[timthechef]

My railroad is the Cherry Vally and Potomac Railroad.

[reklein]

I call my 10x14 around the room size layout, Collier Bluffs and Poker Flats RR.Its set in Eastern WA and western ID which was crawling with RR back in 1900. The town of Collier Bluffs serves the logging and grain business while the Port Of Poker Flats is a railhead on the Snake river. I'm torn between light steam and early diesel so I kinda hve two stables of locos depending on the mood I'm in.

[TomDiehl]

I made up one in the 60's that I still use today. My diesels roughly follow the paint scheme of the Reading RR, but I use a lighter green. I always like the way they put the locomotive number on the long hood in BIG numerals.

I kept it ambiguous so it wouldn't restrict me to any area of the country.

Samson, Burnton, & Southern

[Anonymous]

The following is on topic, I am redoing my web page and this is from the new version.....

My Cincinnati, Georgetown & Portsmouth Railroad really existed from 1880's until 1936. Financial problems delayed construction and prevented the tracks ever being built beyond Georgetown. Track right of way was purchased with promises of jobs and shares of ownership. This ultimately saved the road during the bad times during the Depression. It's tracks originated at the Carroll Street Station near the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks in eastern Cincinnati. The line was plagued by poor design and lacked the financial means to correct it. The track rising out of the Ohio River Valley was so steep that only three cars at a time could be pulled up the hill. In the first quarter of the 20th Century the line electrified and built generating plants every ten miles to power the trains. During off peak hours the generating stations sold the excess power to the surrounding towns. For over forty years eastern Hamilton, Clermont and Brown Counties grew up around the transportation provided by the railroad and it's subsidiaries. When the Great Depression hit the areas economy flopped. Passenger service fell as people lost jobs and no longer needed to commute or were able to shop in Cincinnati. Freight traffic dropped as the economy failed. With so many of the areas citizens connected to the railroad as owners, employees, shippers, consignees, and passengers there was a great effort by the community to save the railroad and by doing that save the community. Old steam locomotives were pulled out of mothballs to work the flat areas. Generating stations were sold off to raise money. An alternate route was needed for the steep hill out of Cincinnati and people needed jobs. A new route was surveyed. Land was bought and paid for with jobs. Stone for building and ballast was needed. This created jobs at Grant quarry in Georgetown. The need for ties was filled by Felicity lumber merchants no longer able to sell fine hardwoods to furniture manufacturers. The company even placed a one time order of one pair of work boots for every employee from Bethel Shoe Manufacturing. The economy beyond the interchange floundered but the economy along the CG&P survived and so did the CG&P. Smaller for a time. No longer electrified, most of the catentary had been removed and sold. As the Depression lifted and the nations economy went onto a war footing the CG&P was in a good position to prosper with the country.   
The above description of my proto-lanced model railroad is part history and part fiction. The railroad died in 1936, 21 years before I was born but I knew it from the relics I grew up around, abandoned right of ways, bridges, and an old passenger coach that was transformed into a store. There have been two books written about the CG&P The Cincinnati, Georgetown and Portsmouth Railroad by Stephen B. Smalley in 1977 published by Trolley Talk and Railroad with 3 Gauges: The Cincinnati, Georgetown and Portsmouth RR and Felicity and Bethel RR by David McNeil self published in 1986. One day I hope to have both these books. I have seen the McNeil book, it is the basis for the non-fiction part of the above history.

........Back when this thread first came around I wanted to model "those abandoned tracks across the road from the farm house" I have learned a lot since then. I have been thinking about color schemes and heralds to.......

As much as I want to model the CG&P there are road blocks to doing that. I have never seen a color photo of any locomotive or piece of rolling stock that belonged to the railroad. The black and white photos I have see seem to be a single darker color with lighter color lettering. Doesn't narrow it down much. Growing up in the area helps think of something plausible. To this day Georgetown's, the entire area's, big claim to fame is President Ulysses S. Grant. Red, white and blue is a little flashy and the photos looked like they were one solid color. General Grant led the North in the War of the Blue & the Gray. So blue it is. I decided that the passenger cars would have white roofs early on in the project. Heating the cars is easy. Cooling them is much harder but a white roof reflects the heat of the sun and is very practical. I think that white lettering will show up better on the blue then black would but I am not sure they are available. When I started building the station kit I decided the company colors should be used there to. The upper half of the walls are off white, the doors, window trim and lower walls get the blue paint. I have always liked tile roofs so the stations are ending up Red, White & Blue.  Once I had them painted it reminded me of an old Sohio gas station back before BP.    

.......I have not designed the herald but I know what I want, I just need to pick the font and find a silhouette of General Grant. I am thinking, the name in a good sized font with Grants head to the right and in smaller letters under the name "The Grant Line"

[tcf511]

I operate the HO Manassas Gap and Front Royal Railroad. We have our own business cards, passes, stock certificates and rolling stock. I'm the CEO but I'm also the janitor. :)

[Anonymous]

look up my rant about the Conecticut River Valley Railroad. my freelanced"scavenger" railroad. it gets first pick at older desils and keeps them in service well past their usefullness, then theyre put into yard service.
GEARHEAD426
[8]

[BRVRR]

My Black River Valley Railroad is a fictional connecting line between the NYC and the Santa Fe somewhere in the middle United States. It turns out there was a real connection between the two roads in Streator, Illinois. No connecting road though. There is just one locomotive, a EMD F7 painted in the house livery. (Photo on my website). Plans for a couple of box cars and a caboose or two in the BRVRR livery haven't come to fruition yet. Lately, though, the BRVRR is becoming more and more, a part of the NYC.

[Texas Zepher]

QUOTE: Originally posted by GAPPLEG

Last but not least is the Texas Mining and Industrial railroad, my ficticious shortline.

What do they mine in Texas? Phosphate, potassium, gypsum, salt? They only have like 14 lignite mines in the whole place. Or is mining just a generic term used for things like sand, gravel, oil and gas.

http://www.nma.org/pdf/states_99/smbtx1999.pdf

[caldreamer]

My Golden State Railroad is a fictional bridge route in northen california that runs from Santa Clara near the south end of the San Francisco peninsula to Stockton in the San Juaquin Valley down to Modesto and than up he spine of the sierra nevada mountains to Alturus and then west through Klamath Falls, OR to Medford, OR.
We connect the six big western railroads to each other, as well a number of smaller local roads. None of the western mergers occured so we bridge the traffic for the BN, ATSF, UP, SP, WP and CORP. We ae very busy and profitable as no transcontinental or west coast north/south traffic can occur without going through us.

[colvinbackshop]

Even though I operate a DM&IR ore drag form the Soudan Mine to the ore docks at Duluth.....Most all other operation centers around two fictitious RR's.
The main one is the Colvin Creek Railway, a connecting route (mostly on abandoned DM&IR and General Logging right of way) between the routes of the GN, DW&P, SOO, some of the plethora of lines that serviced the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior.
The other fictitious road is the lumbering/logging RR, of Sawyer Lumber Co. Again some of this operation is on old right of way of General Logging, Virginia & Rainy Lake and other logging lines.....that operated in the Arrowhead in the late 1800's to early 1900's.,
Again...It's a fictitious story, but based on accounts and major amounts of real fact and history, making it a more of a "What If ????" then pure fiction.
If you want to hear more on how it all came about, email me and I'll be happy to share! I've actually been writing a history of the CCRY.

[dinwitty]

The club I was at I took a prototypical RR and narrow gauged it to be prototypically correct as far as the name goes, but the club layout was fictional, but UPish.
The club had its own decals and paint schemes.

I am going more prototypical now, but will have a narrow gauge line based on a real narrow gauge line the RR I will model that it interchanged with.
The real NG line was abandoned by then, but I will make it survived.

[canazar]

There is mine. [:)]

[Medina1128]

The Clinton-Golden Valley RR is in the house! It's a fictional short line rail line that still carries coal from the Medina Valley Mining Co. to the coal-fired electrical plant in Montrose, MO. We also do a fair bit of logging, what with all the cedar and pine that we have growing locally. A rich eccentric was so enthralled by trains in his youth, that he bought his own Sante Fe F7s and streamline cars, a Union Pacific 4-8-4 led consist, a light Mike with requisite 40's era freight cars and a Santa Fe 4-8-4 led heavyweight consist. He brings them out for a bit of railfanning from time to time.

[DanRaitz]

I am currently modeling 2 RR's. The first is the Sn3 Nevada Midland Ry. This was a proposed (but never built) RR between Austin and Tonopah NV. The second is the HO scale Minnesota & International Ry. In my version of history this real RR DID NOT disappear into the Northern Pacific in 1941, but is alive and well.

Dan

[marknewton]

We have one prototype layout, and one protofreelance project. The prototype layout is based on the Toyama Chihou Tetsudo, or "Chitetsu". It's a Japanese electrified commuter railway in HOj scale, 1/80th.

Our first US-prototype layout was based on the Nickel Plate in East Peoria, however our intention was to replace it after we moved house with a "proto-freelanced" HO layout which would be heavily inspired by the Chicago & Illinois Midland. It would have been called the Chicago, Peoria & St.Louis Railroad. Anyone knowledgable about the real C&IM will recognise this name as belonging to one of it's predecessor roads. It's a very "railroady" sounding name, I reckon.

I designed a herald for the C.P.& St.L. roadname, derived from the real C.&I.M. diamond herald. We applied the herald, and reporting marks to a couple of freight cars using Railroad Roman, and were very pleased with their appearance. The steam loco livery was that of the C.&I.M., with the large block numbers and red stripe on the tender.

Our one real departure from the example of the C.&I.M. was to design a colour scheme for the road's passenger diesels - Alco FAs - based on the Rock Island freight scheme, and using EMD streamliner-style lettering for the roadname. The freight diesels were going to be our old NKP units, with red/orange stripes substituted for the yellow, and C.P.&St.L. logos.

However, a change of job has meant my wife has little time at present for modelling, and I have other modelling interests to explore. So for now the C.P.& St.L. layout is on hold, although I continue to work on locomotives and rollingstock.

Cheerio,

Mark.

[GN-Rick]

I model the Great Northern Railway (yes, I know) but in addition, as a traffic
source, I also have my own Three Lakes Timber Co., a logging railroad
connecting to my GN at Snohomish, Wa. This gives me a place to run
my small fleet of logging-type locomotives.

[Anonymous]

I have been planning the Allegheny Midwestern. It is a Class I sandwiched between the Norfolk Southern and the Union Pacific. It 'links' the NS with the UP in PIttsburgh and Kansas City. The whole idea was spawned by the supermergers of the 80's and 90's.

[GAPPLEG]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Texas Zepher

QUOTE: Originally posted by GAPPLEG

Last but not least is the Texas Mining and Industrial railroad, my ficticious shortline.

What do they mine in Texas? Phosphate, potassium, gypsum, salt? They only have like 14 lignite mines in the whole place. Or is mining just a generic term used for things like sand, gravel, oil and gas.

http://www.nma.org/pdf/states_99/smbtx1999.pdf

Again I love the ambiguous, The TMI may run west from Texas into the NM copper mining areas, then again they may not. All I state for my layout is that it's located somewhere on the Lordburg sub. of the SP. ( I like to think my headquarters are near El Paso, that's where I grew up) One of the largest copper smelters in the US is there. )

[GAPPLEG]

QUOTE: Originally posted by canazar

There is mine. [:)]

Really like the paint scheme you finally settled on, really sharp.[:D][8D]

[wjstix]

My road is the "St.Paul Route", the St.Paul Duluth and Canadian Ry. It's based on a real railroad, the St.Paul and Duluth which started as the Lake Superior and Mississippi around 1870. In 1900 the St.P&D was bought by Northern Pacific, but in my world that never happened. A nice thing about basing it on a one-time real RR is I had a starting point for a herald, a real crack passenger train name to use, and even a real slogan - "Route of the Famous Lake Superior Limited".

[Isambard]

My Grizzly Northern Railway is a CPR subsidiary, with a mainline that runs from Rocky Mountain House, Alberta to Kamloops, BC, via Geiranger BC and Grizzly, BC. A branchline from Geiranger services the Kingdom Copper Mine, the Brunel Coal Mine and several rural hamlets in the Rockies and Selkirks. The era is the mid 1940's, before the arrival of diesels.

The mainline motive power is currently comprised of 2-8-0 Consolidations and 2-10-0 Decapods. Delivery of a 2-10-2 to haul heavy drag freights is expected shortly. An 0-8-0 handles switching at Geiranger. A 3-truck Shay heads up ore trains on the branchline.

The Grizzly Northern had it's origins in the early 1960's, when inspired by boyhood memories of frequent trips through the Rockies on the CPR and by a 1959 trip through the Norwegian mountains, I decided to model a mountain railway, then to be called the Groetli Northern Railway. This remained at the time largely a paper activity.

Like many of us I had owned Marx and Lionel trains as a boy and done some HO modelling when in my teens (long long ago). Modelling activities beyond the paper stage were postponed for some 45 years however, as schooling, career, marriage and family became my pre-occupations.

On retirement several years ago and now with (some) spare time available, I decided to get back into model railroading. Layout sketches and notes for the Groetli Northern were pulled out from the archives and dusted off and motive power and rolling stock were purchased. I became an active member in a local model railroad club, greatly helping me up the learning curve with respect to new (to me) techniques and technologies, such as DCC.

While doing this, I also decided to write a "brief" history of the Groetli Northern to provide a framework for my modelling. This, after a considerable number of hours then lead to a five page historical document and a renaming of the railway to the Grizzly Northern.

Today, although a mountain railway, the Grizzly Northern operates on the flatlands of the club, pending the (potential) construction of a home layout.

If you're interested in reading the history of the Grizzly Northern, "as published in the 1 July 1938 Dominion Day edition of the "The Caribou News and Chronicle", drop me a line.

[:)]

[tjsmrinfo]

my railroad is the HNH RY a class 3 bridge route with trackage rights over the Santa Fe.
early power is x conrail units and some second hand rolling stock.
i also created a railroad for my girlfriend called BHP&W which is Boston Hyde Park and Western, which will interchange/run through on HNH/Santa Fe tracks.

HNH stands for Huffman N Huffman.


tom

[Anonymous]

How about a few well known freelance layouts Franklin and South Manchester (George Sellious) Hoosac Valley (*** Elwell) V & O (Allen McLellend) Gore and Dapheated (John Allen) Allegheny Midland (Tony Koester) , I could go on for pages. My own is the Neponset Ridge Shortline and I bought the decals from Rail Graphics

[vsmith]

The Borracho Springs Railway is a small short line narrow gauge railway operating between the New Mexico/Arizona border towns of Borracho Springs and Banjo Juction where it interchanges with the Standard Guage. It serves the Borracho Distillery, the Dina-Might? talcum powder co., the F.U.B.A.R. Mining Consortium. It also has a branchline to the small community of Snafu Acres serving the Snafu Inc silver mine, the Long Johnson Bar cattle ranch and the Fonda U sheep ranch [;)]

The managment will operate whatever equipment it can buy on the cheap and has a rather extensive roster for its size, thats because most need to be keep in the shop for repairs or are just taking up space. As a result the roster is a mix of what-ever from where-ever as long as it fits between the rails.[:p]

Freelancing is far more fun and offers more freedom than prototyping[:D]

[ClinchValleySD40]

Clinch Valley RR Co.

[Milwhiawatha]

I have my own railroad called the Midwest & Northern I really dont know what class it is some tell me its basically a class 1 but I didnt create it based on class just something to run and have fun with. At the time I didnt know there was a Pike registery with that name already but oh well so is the life of model railroading. I do my own decals and paint my own locomotives with minor super detail. I do exchange with fallen flags such as the Milwaukee Road, Wisconsin Central, SOO, some BNSF/ATSF. I also have steam excursions from L&N and the Milwaukee kept one of their Hiawathas. if you would like to see go here
http://www.freewebs.com/midwestandnorthern

[Pruitt]

I run my own roadname - the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy.

I heard someone else was using that for awhile, and I'm thinking of suing the company which they merged into, for trademark infringement.....