Stupid Railroad names

[Anonymous]

Union Pacific-Western Pacif with the last colors of western Pacific
Burlington Northern Santa Fe=Chicago Pacific and Western
CSX=Atlantic and western
CP Rail=Canadian Western

Stay safe

David Brown

[M636C]

There is a little metre gauge electric line that runs from Locarno in Switzerland to Domdossola (on the Italian end of the Simplon tunnel.

It has amazing curves and scenery, and allows a railfan to go through the Gotthard, Simplon and Loetchberg tunnels in one day, if you work out the connections correctly and can find the underground platforms at Domdossola.

The line name in Italian is "Ferrovie Autonome Regionale Ticinese", and the neat little blue and white railcars have big chrome initials down the side reading...

F A R T

I think it reads SSIF on the cars with Swiss lettering!

Peter

[Anonymous]

In Europe you see that railroads are privatized from the state. They can (and have to) grow outside the borders of their homecountry and therefore have to use company names that do not represent a country. The freight service of Germany, Danmark and Holland merged into Railion, in France the SNCF renamed their freight FRET. You see: no cities or countries are represented in these names. And passenger trains crossing the borders: Thalys from Amsterdam to Paris, Eurostar from Paris to London.

[TH&B]

Don, I agree Chicago remains a major railroad place name none use any more. The CN is now realy the Chicago Canada & Mississippi RR.

-Some Euro names are even more stupid, like how do you even pronounce Railion? Or Thalys or Arriva? It's like Amtrak's Accela, real dumb!

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by : Locomutt
How's" EAGLE RIDGE RAILWAY" sound?

Sounds good. just to let you know, there is a 'Potomac Eagle Railway" tourist line in WV.

QUOTE: Originally posted by Espeefoamer
CSX should have gone with Chessie Seaboard.

They did.....kind of.......
The "X" supposedly has multiple meanings: "Combination", "Along with other railroads", representing future mergers, etc.

They could have been kind enough not to kill Chessie the cat though! We could have Peake in military uniform again!

[Rustyrex]

Seaboard Coast Line, kind of a redundant name for a railroad.

St Louis-San Fransisco always made me laugh too, until several years ago doing research found out about their plans of actually buiding to San Fransisco.

CSX - Chessie + Seaboard Xed?? Seaboard is now 0 for 2[:D]

Speaking of strange names for railroads after mergers, was a name tossed around for fun of the BNSF + Norfolk Southern = Burlington, Norfolk Southern Fe [:D] LOL, although with the track record of railroad merger names, who knows...........

Rusty

[tree68]

SCL = Seaboard Air Line + Atlantic Coast Line

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by tree68

[2c] Agreed, Union Pacific , being the one remaining unchanged name, deserves to stay, other sentiments notwithstanding.

Many railroads, large and small, never reached one or the other of the places in their name, even though the promoters certainly wanted investors to believe they eventually would. With today's wide ranging systems, a "place to place" name just doesn't cut it. You need a regional name. If the rumors of UP+CSX ever come to fruition, you're talking coast-to-coast (the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad?)

I've tried to think of a name for CSX, still drawing a blank. NS wasn't too far off until they took on CR.

BNSF is actually the amalgamation of three RR names: Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, Northern Pacific, and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, with some other mergers thrown in, I think.

I don't think a UP+CSX should be called the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad. People would think it's part of the Atlantic &Pacific Tea Company.

[fuzzybroken]

re: SCL -- maybe Atlantic Air Line (AAL) would have been better?

re: CSX (actually "CSXT"!) -- seems I read somewhere that CSX assured people when they first used the name that it was "temporary", and a better name would be forthcoming... here's hoping...

re: UP -- Canada (which evidently also includes Wisconsin... [:(!]) has the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific, I always thought that Union Pacific represented the United States the same way. Till they overthrew the C&NW, now we don't like 'em... [:o)]

re: BNSF -- I agree they could use a better name. Heck, just go with "Santa Fe", and bring back the warbonnets!!! Santa Fe is a longer-lived name anyways. What would have resulted from the CN-BNSF merger that never happened???

[2c],
-Mark
http://www.geocities.com/fuzzybroken

[espeefoamer]

CN+BNSF=BurlingtonCanadianNorthernSaskachawan(sp?)Fe.
(Canadian Northern was a predisessor to Canadian National.)

[Wdlgln005]

Let's add a few more lines
NS= North & South

Maybe CSX could be Y&D (Yankee & Dixie). Funny how L&N and GM&O used Dixie as part of their slogans. I think the line out of Atlanta was the
Atlantic & Great Western?

[AltonFan]

QUOTE: Just think about reactions if these two roads would have merged:

Illinois Central Union Pacific.

This name might also be too much to paint on the side of locomotives. The shortned version would have to do

No, they would have dubbed this the "E. H. Harriman Company" or perhaps The Associated Railroads".

Now to test my understanding...

...is this thread about stupid names for railroads, or the names of stupid railroads, or even stupid railroads with stupid names?

[Anonymous]

CP should be Canadian Period.

[ReimanTrainfan]

QUOTE: Originally posted by fuzzybroken

re: SCL -- maybe Atlantic Air Line (AAL) would have been better?

re: CSX (actually "CSXT"!) -- seems I read somewhere that CSX assured people when they first used the name that it was "temporary", and a better name would be forthcoming... here's hoping...

re: UP -- Canada (which evidently also includes Wisconsin... [:(!]) has the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific, I always thought that Union Pacific represented the United States the same way. Till they overthrew the C&NW, now we don't like 'em... [:o)]

re: BNSF -- I agree they could use a better name. Heck, just go with "Santa Fe", and bring back the warbonnets!!! Santa Fe is a longer-lived name anyways. What would have resulted from the CN-BNSF merger that never happened???

[2c],
-Mark
http://www.geocities.com/fuzzybroken

According to the January 2004 issue of TRAINS. It was 10 yrs ago that CSX said the name was temporary. I have a feeling that UNFORTUNATLY CSX will stay, and the Chessy kitten is gone for good.[:(]

[Anonymous]

I Like the Big New Santa Fe, Never shouldve got rid of the warbonnet though.......

[TH&B]

I think the Canadian Pacific is a very suitable name, it is still geographicaly mostly Canadian but it ships alot of traffic traded with the Pacific rim countries, so if any change it could be the Chinese Pacific.

SCL; Seaboard means coastline, so that is a stupid name realy. hehe

A realy cool name was Rock Island or just The Rock. Imagine if Roch Island had been the successes UPRR had and bought up all those western roads and instead of Union Pacific we would have The Rock, and everyone would dislike The Rock. hehe

Another cool name is Grand Trunk Western and of course Santa Fe, just neet words to say.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by oltmannd

QUOTE: Originally posted by dmoore74

QUOTE:
BNSF is actually the amalgamation of three RR names: Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, Northern Pacific, and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, with some other mergers thrown in, I think.

440cuin

Actually Burlington Northern was an amalgation of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, Northern Pacific, Great Northern and the Spokane, Portland & Seattle.
The original name proposed was Great Northern Pacific & Burlington. I'm sure all the sign painters would have loved that one.

It's kinda funny how "Burlington" got top billing over Chicago and Quincy in CB&Q. Sort of like "Santa Fe", I suppose. Chicago is still THE RR city (at least for frt) - and nobody has it in their name, tho' we do have Burlington, Norfolk and Santa Fe represented....

A good name change on the BNSF would be Chicago, Burlington & Everywhere West, or breaking the road down into 6 major regions and calling them the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, with a silver, red and yellow paint scheme, St. Louis-San Francisco with a red and white paint job, Chicago, Burlington & Quincy with the "Blackbird" paint, Great Northern in green and orange, Northern Pacific in black and yellow, and Spokane, Portland & Seattle in dark gray and yellow.

The perfect railroad, albeit a little unpractical. THE BURLINGTON LIVES ON...

BTW, there used to be a joke when Chessie System and Seaboard/Family Lines first announced they were going to merged that the new line would be called the "Family Cat"[:D]

[Anonymous]

One of the really cool RR names I remember from my kid days is "Route of the Phoebe Snow". I have no idea what company it represented , I just remember liking that name. Anybody know what company it was? It never appeared on locos as far as I know, just the cars.

[Anonymous]

Bobchuck,
The Good Ol' Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, better known as just the Lackawanna. Another good slogan from the DL&W was "The Road of Anthracite" boasting the hard coal the road shipped and burned in steamers.

[Train Guy 3]

Southern + Norfolk and Western = Norfolk Southern..... Well it went west of Norfolk and it's in the south.... hmmmmm I guess we'll just leave out all the tracks in the north out the name.

[Anonymous]

Railroads are not the only companies with stupid names. Remember the short lived ENCO that the current ExxonMobil had? Enco in Japaneze means broken machine. No wonder they quickly changed the name. GM's Nova had a similar colorful history. Look at some of the NYSE companies with names that we are unable to say or have no relationship to the company's main line of business: Cleco, Enron, Keyspan, CMS, Aquila, Nexen, TXU, and RWE. These are just a smattering of oddies from the energy field. Shall we go to the next industry?

[tree68]

QUOTE: Originally posted by 440cuin


SCL; Seaboard means coastline, so that is a stupid name realy. hehe

Atlantic Coast Line + Seaboard Air Line = Seaboard Coast Line

[Anonymous]

Railroad names can still have that regional sound: NS easily becomes the Southern and Western (S&W) and CSX can be the Atlantic Coast and Pacific. Both of these names use one the of the original names of their strong parent roads that saw the future, came to the plate and bought those former proud (read bankrupt) yankee roads. In the process they gave them good and honorable names with out a Penn or Central to be seen anywhere. The Southern, The Coastline, their cousins and the old man of the House of Morgan that put them together still have those most respected names as a part of their heritage

[Anonymous]

When Union Pacific bought the Southern Pacific they coined a new name from the two equally sized lines. UP took the first word from their name and the last word for SP. Eureka!! The new name is Union Pacific

[Anonymous]

Union Pacific has a fixation with railroads that have PACIFIC in their name. They have bought Southern Pacific, Central Pacific, Western Pacific, Missouri Pacific, Kansas Pacific, Texas Pacific, plus probable a couple other pacifics I cannot remember.

[Rustyrex]

Here's another, the short lived Post Rock Island Operation of the Limon, CO to Goodland, KS Line by the Cadillac & Lake City Railroad, with both namesake cities being over 600 miles away from its line :) Actually, C&LC was a former Michigan shortline who pulled camp and restarted its operation in Kansas under the same name, but it still looked funny seeing this come through the towns wondering "where is Cadillac or Lake City?".

[TH&B]

And UP might still one day buy Canadian Pacific :(

[espeefoamer]

Camas Prairie Rail Net. What the heck is a rail net?Do trains stop on a trestle so the crews can go fishing? [?][;)]

[Anonymous]

I feel that the BNSF should just give up the Santa Fe name and be like the UP (Usually Parked) and just do what all of us that work for BNSF at my terminal on old BN line call it anyway and thats Burlington Northern. Lord knows the Santa Fe has been nothing but a thorn in BN's butt since the merger.

Sincerely,
A BN Conductor
Oregon Trunk Sub

[Anonymous]

The model railroader who lost his "imaginary" railroad name got my sympathy. For years I've been running a model railroad loosely based on the NYNH&HRR... I just shortened it down to LB&I, which stands for Lost, Bewildered & Indifferent. If UP takes it I'm gonna charge a humongous model fee for trademark infringement... and give it all up for free Trains subsciptions for the literature impaired railfan. Youse guys are my witnesses.
Erik