“Next is to build the mountain village of Rankena, a company town built by the sawmill owners but with a new industry, the largest tofu packing plant east of the Mississippi River.”
“3rd phase is Tiger Hill, the 7’x14’ iron mining and blast furnace section, loosely based on the mines at Lyon Mountain in the Northern Adirondacks.”
"And, if there is time left in the year, my namesake, the town of Muddy Creek needs to be built, with its paper mill, business district, residential areas, rail yards and the interchanges with the NY Central and the D&H. "
My appologies to MuddyCreek for butchering up his post, but the above quotes were needed to ask my newb question:
Where do all these names come from? It’s not just from this poster, but everywhere. I’ve seen people talk about their layouts with all different kinds of names, towns, and railroads I’ve never heard of. Are these actual names, or are they just made up?
Some are made up, others are actual. It depends upon what you want to do. If the touraine around your area is so BLAH that it offers no challenges, but you really like rivers, mountains, tunnels, big bridges over gorges, etc. then you can make up a fictional name. That is what is so nice about this hobby, you are only limited by your creativity, your skills, and …MONEY.
And, most important , WELCOME cyb0rg!!!
Almost every place there is a siding or crossing or junction on a real railroad has some kind of a name to identify it, even if it is not really an incorporated or inhabited “town”.
Names help give us a sense that the railroad is a real place going somewhere, not “over here by the front of the table” or “the track over there by the window.”
Many modelers model the trains of real railroaders, but probably not so many try to model real specific places that have to be done just exactly right and take up an impossible amount to space to model “that place as it it really is/was.” So we will model a ficticious segment of a real railroad, with a town that is a combination of the elements of several real places.
I model Santa Fe, but to give my model railroad its own name, I came up with an imaginary subsidiary. Texas law required railroads run in Texas to have their corporate offices in the state, so Santa Fe came up with a couple of companies to own its lines in Texas called the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe, and the Panhandle and Santa Fe. David Barrrow’s model railroad is Austin is the Cat Mountain and Santa Fe. My little layout is the Santa Vaca and Santa Fe. I wanted something southwestern sounding, and Santa Fe has a lot of towns and stations with religious names in Spanish. I heard of Vacaville in California and changed it to Santa Vaca, meaning holy cow.
I don’'t actually have this logo painted on any cars or locomotives.
My railroad runs through a courthouse square town in the piney woods of East Texas named Johnston, named in memory of a model railroad buddy who died in 1973.
Johnston wide view http://www.railimages.com/albums/kennethanthony/aad.jpg
I check several references to see that there wasn’t any real town named Johnston in Texas. Johnston is the county seat of “Wayne County”, an imaginary county. Many Texas counties are named for T
An interesting aside on this is that the names used by the railroad may or may not be related to the names used by anybody else.
I remember many occasions when I asked someone where a point on the railroad was and got nothing but a blank stare. I would later discover that nobody else used that name but I was within a few hundred yards of it when I asked the question.
Another example was a passing siding on the P&LE directly across the Monogahela River from Charleroi, PA. The P&LE called it ‘East Charleroi’ but nobody else did.
On a slight aside, Vacaville, CA was actually named for its founder, Juan Vaca, but yes, the name does translate directly to “cow town.” The “Santa Vaca” name is great–it’s funny if you know the joke but sounds convincing enough to seem real.
While there is debate over “funny railroad names”, there seems to be a prototype for it–plenty of railroads have “jokey” nicknames (the Stockton Terminal & Eastern’s “Slow, Tired & Easy”, or the Northwestern Pacific “Nowhere in Particular Railroad”.) I suppose we can blame John Allen for it, but I think we model railroaders, like most advanced but slightly mutated species, just like puns.
Railroads sometimes make up name for their mileposts, after company executives or staff or something that was near the station at the time that may not have been around for decades.
I’ve spent all day trying to come up with something. It’s important to me to have some reference to a “real” railroad, even if mine has to fit in a 4x6 space. I’m an Ohioan, and we don’t have much in the way of scenic mountain passes. We do however, have a couple points of industrial interest, so that’s where I began my research.
My layout will be modeled after the Newburgh & South Shore Railway (NSR) for freight/industry and the Erie Lackawanna (EL) for passengers. My current space and budget issues limit me to combining these for now, but I have hopes of one day building another 4x6 layout strictly for passenger operations. Right now, I’m focusing on industry.
cyborg, are you trying to come up with a name for your railroad or names for towns or names for industries or all of the above? I don’t quite understand what that “something” is your looking for. Lots of times names for places or things are given after the railroad is built and up and running. A friend long ago had a junction, it was call Bentnale only because during construction he bent a nail over while driving it. Since you are a Buckeye your line could be called the BS Line ------- Buckeye Short Line. Yeah, I know what your think’in, Ken
first off tourain is spelled terrain but oh well. Were such train hicks!! Any way, I am doing a desert southwest whimsical layout (spaghetti western meets Modern shipping) And I just changed the names of the real areas to suit my needs. Instead of Arizona…Anozira …Tucson… Taxson and so on. Hope that helps.
I was just wondering about the whole naming process. Sometimes it’s easy to spot a made up name, and other times it isn’t. I was just curious as to how others came up with some of the names they did.
Even in my short time here, I can already tell that there are many different “classifications” of modelers. I imagine there are some here who will toil for hours over detail and realism, while others name things after grandchildren and use birthdates and such as engine numbers.
Personally, I’m kind of in the middle of the road. I’m a stickler for detail, but I also have 3 kids. I will be naming some of my future structures after each of them.
Oops, getting back to this thread a little late. Missed it, somehow.
Where do these names come from? My imagination or elsewhere. I’m not the stickler for prototypical accuracy that some are and nitpickers will never be able to tell me that the hardware store is on the wrong side of the street in that town.
Muddy Creek, as I said was the original name of the town I grew up in until sometime in the late 1800’s some town bigwig changed it to the totally pretentious name of Pearl River. I always liked the name and gave it to my layouts as they were built and abandoned over the years. The new N scale Muddy Creek will be loosely based on Saranac Lake, where the D&H and the NYC both had tracks at one time.
Ranakena is the name of the N Scale town with the sawmill and the Tofu plant, a combination of my vegetarian daughter’s name and Wanakena, a small logging/sawmill town up here in the Adirondacks.
Tiger Hill is a nickname I’m told the D&H oldtimers called Lyon Mountain a former iron mining community just north of here. Robyn Lake will be a resort community with a small, private sanitarium, named after my psychologist daughter.
Naming areas of your layout for family members or friends often offers up suggestions for businesses & scenes that suit that individual.
And I just changed the names of the real areas to suit my needs. Instead of Arizona…Anozira …Tucson… Taxson and so on. Hope that helps.