Layout Names (or not)

[mu26aeh]

Mine came from it's prototype.  It's not tie for tie, spike for spike, but key features are being modeled as close as my limited skills will get them

[Santa Fe Guy]

My RR the Santa Fe Railway Southern Division sort of says it all. It is what it is. It runs from Augusta in Kansas to Flynn Yard in Oklahoma on single track like the AT&SF does or did in the mid 80's. I am like Mark I named all my towns following the ones the real RR run through in correct order. All my paper work reflects the theme, Bulletins, Logo, Font business cards, Timetable and information hand out.
Whilst my buildings are not prototypical (I now wish they were) the RR feels like it was meant to be and has so for the past almost 21years since construction began.
It also has a theme of hauling mostly Grain with Cement and mixed freight as well.
So I would try and use a prototype name and build around that.
Have fun.
Rod.

[up1950s]

Layout name is very different than a railroad name .

The bad .
It will require decals .
Some chicks may not like the name and find a modeler with a better name .
Common names are State & City , State & Direction , State & Central , etc . All these limit the scenery , connections , and loads delivered and originated .
Not unlike a tattoo , what pleased you now may not down the road .

The good .
You become an expert on your roads history .
It is fun to label your equipment .
People will stop asking you why there are so many road names on you locos .

Layout names I know nothing about 'cept it ought to be a logical match to what you see .
 

[John]

Maryland and Ohio -- 

Baltimore and Ohio was already being used

[basementcalling]

The bad .
It will require decals .
Some chicks may not like the name and find a modeler with a better name .

This I had not thought of. I believe chicks dig the long ball, according to old ESPN baseball advertising, so would they dig the long haul?

I started the thread more as a tell your story opportunity than for specific advice for my layout. I do have a double challenge of naming a free lanced railroad, and the layout, the the railroad will be heavily UP based.

Effet is as classic as Brian Brendel naming the original 1TRAK end turn module "Monica" during the Clinton impeachment hearings. But I believe he since renamed it to avoid explanations. Even John Allen said he wished he had avoided the GD moniker.

I'll have to go back in my basement closet and look at options. Every time I get a decent idea, I write it on the back of the dry wall in the closet under the stairs. Boy will that make selling the house hard one day.

[jagged ben]

...

I know it won't become the California, Oregon and Washington. Spare me the COW jokes.

...

I really think that's too funny not to use.  If you don't use it, I might one day.

[up1950s]

I really think that's too funny not to use.  If you don't use it, I might one day.

NS has the horse , IC had the hog , is there place for Elsie the cow ?

[nkalanaga]

GN had a mountain goat, and I think it was the Yreka Western that had a flying goose,  so there's probably a place for anything. 

Of course, the RGS had their Galloping Goose, but that logo was specifically for the railcars, not the railroad.

Not much of interest in my names.  The BN is just that, the Burlington Northern.  The narrow gauge is the West Ridge Railway, which does have some real history, dating back to 1971.  I set my lumber company in northwest Montana, between Whitefish and Eureka, on the GN/BN.  Since it ran from the sawmill, and interchange, into the mountains west of the mainline, I named it the West Ridge Lumber Company.  Just coincidence that the West Side Lumber Co. was well known to railfans and modelers, as I'd never heard of it at the time.  When I started tinkering with Nn3 in the mid 70s, I needed a railroad name, so I made it a subsidiary of the lumber company, thus the West Ridge Railway.  The first locomotive will be 40 years old next year.  The yellow and black WRLC/WRRy diesel and caboose scheme will be 45.  It's lasted longer than many prototype roads.

[brokemoto]

I like to name mine keeping in mind potential derogatory names.

My first non-historic was called St. Peter's and Lake Erie.   Its initials could be twisted into Start Pushing and Leave Early, Start Praying and Leave Early.

My nineteenth century pike is Goat Hill and Wayte.

My current non-historic is Short Creek and Nopedale.

[basementcalling]

NS has the horse , IC had the hog , is there place for Elsie the cow ?

Chic fI la RR?  ☺

A sheep would be a featured critter too on a granger road.

Do any Florida or southern  roads feature an alligator?

[Rich_S]

For my layout I wanted a somewhat generic Eastern layout, mainly because I have a hard time just picking one or two favorite prototype railroads to model. The two at the top of my list are the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie and the Pittsburgh & West Virginia. So the issue for me was not what railroad, but the actual track location in the real world. If I choose lets say the P&LE Ellwood city branch, I'd have a hard time explaining why there are L&HR C420's running on the branch. So my layout became the Long Valley branch of the ___________________ (fill in the blank with what ever railroad equipment I'm running this week) That way my layout can be a fictitious branch line of any prototype railroad. The layout serves the fictitious town of Long Valley and connect to the main line at any location I choose.

In the long run Model Railroading is about having fun, don't get too bogged down on a name. You could do like a lot of modern short lines and call it Oregon Rail and use locomotives from a leasing companies. Patch out the current railroad name and just add the leasing companies initials keeping the existing road number. Then once you find a name you like, rename the railroad and repaint the equipment. But in the long run, have fun. One of our local hobby shops has one of the best slogans "Relax with a hobby" Don't get stressed out over a name  

[Dave V]

On the subject of "cutesy" names, I will offer my unsolicited and irrelevant opinion...

To me, a cutesy name, whether a pun, a forced acronym, or the names of all the grandchildren, has the effect of diminishing the work.  Unless you're creating a complete work of fantasy (think of Malcolm Furlow's stuff about the time he fell off Model Railroader's radar), generally you do try to make even a freelanced model railroad look realistic.  And yet for every rusted rail and blade of grass you install, there's the cute name you chose coming along behind to "undo" some of the realism you worked hard to achieve.  Imagine the cognitive dissonance when a visitor sees a beautifully detailed and weathered USRA 2-8-2 steaming past with the name of your three cats on the side.  Sorry, but at least in my mind the "Mittens, Socks, and Hairball RR" on the tender dissolves away the details, the weathering, and the surrounding scenery.

Even John Allen admitted he'd long grown tired of the joke but was too far in to do anything about it by then.

As for naming freelance railroads, I can tell you what I did when I was in HO.  Both layouts were standard gauge turn-of-the-20th-century railroads.  The first was based in Colorado, connecting the Colorado Midland Railway at Aspen to the Denver, South Park and Pacific and Denver & Rio Grande narrow gauge lines at Gunnison.  It also had unrealized aspirations to Leadville and to Cripple Creek (the Silver Panic of 1893 confining it to the relatively short distance between Aspen and Gunnison).  It was called, perhaps unimaginatively, the "Gunnison, South Park & Pacific RR."

The other was a coal hauler in central Pennsylvania, connecting with the PRR at Duncansville and again at Johnstown (after a particularly aggressive climb up the Allegheny Front).  It ran parallel to the Hunitingdon and Broad Top Mountain RR for the first few miles and connected to the coal fields served by the H&BTM and the narrow gauge East Broad Top RR.  Not surprisingly, I called it the "Johnstown & Broad Top RR."  The J&BT in 1910 owned a fleet of very early steel 50-ton hoppers that even had their own custom decals with a diamond logo inspired by the Lehigh Valley.

I enjoyed freelancing, but I tried to make sure everything I did was plausible and based on contemporary railroad practice to include naming conventions.  To me, the most plausible freelanced railroads follow that formula, to include a "railroady" name like "Virginian & Ohio," "Allegheny Midland," and "Ohio Southern."

Just my opinion and experience.

[basementcalling]

On the subject of "cutesy" names, I will offer my unsolicited and irrelevant opinion...

To me, a cutesy name, whether a pun, a forced acronym, or the names of all the grandchildren, has the effect of diminishing the work.

Dave, good thoughts. It's why I can never take the "Juniata Division" too seriously because Juniata coveys an unpleasant image of a large sized woman in my mind every time I hear it.  I was scarred for life.

 But I understand the need to pay tribute to family in our hobby.     Using names of friends or family members I think works better for industries and such on the layout. Furlough Furniture (Always on Vacation) or Odegard Plastics (MR&T I believe) are believable, and pay tribute to important people in our lives without compromising the entire layout. 

 Just don't have a "Dewey, Cheatam, and Howe" law firm on the layout.

[Dave V]

A lot of people confuse "Juanita" and "Juniata" for obvious reasons!  Juniata (June-ee-ah-ta) is an old Native American name, probably bastardized.  The river that PRR parallels was called Juniata long before the invention of the steam locomotive.

[Catt]

I don't recall ever naming the home N scale layout beyond calling it the Grande Valley Railway.My N scale show layout on the other hand is called the Onandaga Sub named for but not modeled after a real small town in Michigan.

Come to think of it none of my Z layouts have ever been named either.I may just have to do something about that.